Danielle Dieffenthaller: The storyteller we need

KIERAN ANDREW KHAN

Say the name Danielle Dieffenthaller and we all immediately think of Westwood Park. Of course, the successful local soap opera that went on to rival The Young and the Restless for viewership was a defining moment in this film-maker’s career and story – but the journey started well before that and continues onward for the creative pioneer today.

The television and film producer, director and writer was recently named as one of the four 2019 Laureates of the Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence, a prestigious award and the only one of its kind in the Caribbean.

“This award has made me dig into my whole history in a way that I haven’t had to before and therefore take stock of where I am today,” Dieffenthaller pointed out.

That history started when she was just 18 years old and first walked into the door of TTT, the only television studio where she could gain the experience she was seeking. “I worked there for a year and a half and really cut my teeth there I would say. As much as I was assigned to news, I would go sit with Horace James and read through drama scripts that were piled on his desk even while I was still being assigned to things in news like sod-turning ceremonies, that to be honest, I had no interest in. I pleaded my way onto the set of No Boundaries (a local TV drama) and joined the crew of just five others who were producing that show.”

With a year and a half spent at TTT and armed with confidence in the field of study she wanted to pursue, Dieffenthaller charted a course for Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada to pursue the Radio and Television Arts programme. On completion, she went on to work for Channel 4 in London, England as a researcher/assistant director on the iconic series, The Bandung Files which sent her to far-flung places like Zimbabwe and closer to home like Montserrat and Jamaica.

“I really enjoyed working in London with the likes of Darcus Howe and Tariq Ali, it was where I definitely honed my skill of thinking on my feet. We would be sent on these assignments with very little prior knowledge and have to figure it all out once you got there. Still a great experience with fantastic friends and stories along the way,” she recalled.

Eventually returning to TT with the idea of telling some of our own stories in a way that hadn’t been seen before, Dieffenthaller connected with Georgia Popplewell and Walt Lovelace to create EarthTV, a studio that produced the landmark and critically-acclaimed ten-part series, Eco-watch, for the local audience. Difficult as it may be to recall, there existed very little local content at that time, a stark contrast to today where hundreds of hours of local content are created daily by way of social media networks.

“You also have to remember contextually at this time, a music video for a local artiste meant paying about $2,000 to go to TTT and perform in their studio – which in essence was in front of the curtain and performing the whole song in a couple takes,” Dieffenthaller noted. “Or you would go stand next to a croton (plant) at the Botanic Gardens and that was your entire music video,” she added with a laugh. So the team at EarthTV also had a major part to play in revolutionising the local music video market – aligning it with the emerging international trends of multi-location shoots, with an idea and story to accompany the song itself.” It is far easier to remember when that shift happened – with the likes of Machel Montano and Xtatik’s Big Truck and Blue by 3canal being some of the earlier music videos to her credit.

Ever seeking to grow as a creative professional, the director and producer turned writer came up with the idea to capitalise on the success of shows like The Young and the Restless, the most popular show at the time and offer the now famous local alternative – Westwood Park (WP). After a six season run that catapulted it to pop culture fame, that show remains in syndication in the US and UK and will soon return to the Caribbean through FLOW. It’s even been syndicated in Papua New Guinea more recently – lending strength to what Dieffenthaller already innately knows – that we have unique stories to tell, that do have a global appeal.

Still, there were difficult times ever familiar with creative professionals, as she recalled. “I remember after the success of Eco-watch, I thought it would be smooth sailing from there. But it wasn’t. For a time, I remember eating the same $10 fried rice every day for lunch from a nearby restaurant, day after day, as our funds dwindled. When we got into music videos, which of course cost more than just shooting in a TV studio by a curtain, the naysayers noted that no one would want that or they wouldn’t pay that price for it. There was also the notion that WP was the wrong move to make – that no one wanted to see Trinis on television and certainly not this story we had created. And after the success of each season, when we became the #2 most watched show in the country, advertisers and sponsors still couldn’t see the value of investing in our stories, but that’s how it goes,” she detailed.

Today, through her production company smartly named Diefferent Style Flims [sic], she is seeking to tell even more stories through her lens. The series, Plain Sight, is a fictional narrative of the very real threat of crime and its impact on humanity from the upper echelons of society to the man in the street caught in its web. The series was identified for further development as part of the Caribbean Tales Incubator Program as well.

“The point of Plain Sight, while some people have referred to it as a crime drama, it’s really connects to what Gregory Aboud wrote about recently, that we need to see ourselves in another light. We need to see that everything in this country is connected so that what is happening in Sea Lots cannot be isolated from what is happening in the well-off areas. But we also hope to share that aspect of humanity that we seem to have forgotten – that we are all of us, equal. People who are murdered every day in this country have a story to tell and loved ones to tell it. It’s an exploration of another side of our country really,” the film-maker explained.

She is also extending her creative skill set to collaborate with her brother, Jon, on an online content platform called Tego which will essentially be a hub for local content to be made available globally. What is certain of Danielle and the Dieffenthaller clan, is that the legacy of their father, who died earlier year, is not just in the work that he has done, but the work that they as a family continue to do as pioneers, each in their own right.