Ghana-born, Caribbean filmmaker Dr. Yao Ramesar work has been recognized by the award of Caribbean‘s first Laureate in Arts and Letters, at the inaugural Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence (ANSCAFE) in 2006. The awards acknowledged that… “Ramesar‘s most significant contribution is that he has taken Caribbean cinema to the world under the rubric [ …] Caribbeing®”. Ramesar‘s Caribbeing® film practice has featured in various publications, notably Being, Consciousness and Time: Phenomenology and the Videos of Robert Yao Ramesar, a book by Dr Gabrielle Hezekiah. His Caribbeing aesthetic applied to his feature films Sistagod, Her Second Coming and Haiti Bride, and most recently Fortune For All in the context of visionary cinema currents is discussed in The Routledge Companion To World Cinema, 2017, (117-118).

In 2007 he served as the first filmmaker in residence at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine where he pioneered the teaching of cinema at the tertiary level in Trinidad and Tobago, fostering a generation of emerging filmmakers. He has produced over 140 diverse films on Trinidad and Tobago that have been screened locally, regionally and internationally.

Ramesar remains a cornerstone of the emerging Caribbean cinema culture, his aesthetic, “Caribbeing” notable for its almost exclusive reliance on sunlight to illuminate the people and landscapes of the region.

Ramesar and his work have been covered in reviews, interviews etc. including in the New York Times, AOL Time-Warner, the Toronto Star, the Washington Post, BBC, Timeout, Filmmaker Magazine and numerous other broadcasts and publications.

He is a Senior Lecturer at The University of the West Indies Film Degree Programme.