Reyda Gay

University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus
Cultural Studies

In pursuit of a deeper understanding of the role of film and cinema in Caribbean civilisation, Reyda Gay is currently a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Culture, Creative and Performing Arts. In her fourth year of research at the Cave Hill Campus, UWI, she engages ethnographic methods to explore the development of this artistic and cultural form of expression in her homeland of Barbados. With little written about the cinematic unfolding in this arena, Reyda’s aspiration is to use her dissertation, “Rendering New Identities, Rebooting Old Ideologies: An Exploration of Cinema, Space and Identity in Barbados, as her launching pad towards more critical works in Caribbean cinema. 

Complimenting her academic journey, she is also a film practitioner and has a steady career as a multimedia specialist in the corporate and educational systems. Her work experiences culminate in credits such as a screenwriter, scriptwriter, video editor, motion graphic artist, producer and more for international and national projects. Reyda has received nominations and recognition in film festivals such as the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, CaribbeanTales Film Festival and CARIFSTA. She has also won awards at the national level from the National Independence Festival for Creative Arts and the Barbados Visual Media Awards. Her most notable work “Beneath the Dock” was the first film to be listed as a cultural resource for the regional Theatre Arts CESC syllabus in 2017. 

These are skills that she has integrated into her studies producing virtual panel discussions and videos on behalf of the Faculty, creating fictional stories for educational purposes under government funding, and volunteering as a member of the Barbados Film and Video Association. Reyda intends to maintain the union of creative skill, academic knowledge and cultural responsibility in her future work and hopes it will benefit the development of film in her country.