Filmmaker Danielle Dieffenthaller dies

Soyi­ni Grey

Film­mak­er and pro­duc­er Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller has died.

Her broth­ers Kees, Hans and Jon an­nounced her pass­ing via the Kes the Band In­sta­gram ac­count.

Di­ef­fen­thaller was known for her ground­break­ing soap opera West­wood Park, which ran for six sea­sons and was syn­di­cat­ed across the re­gion, North Amer­i­ca, the UK and parts of Africa.

She worked with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val for years as a pro­gram­mer. She and her pro­duc­tion part­ner Walt Lovelace cap­tured some of the most well-known footage of the 1990 coup.

In 2019 she was named the Arts and Let­ters Lau­re­ate by the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion and the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards for Caribbean Ex­cel­lence.

In of­fer­ing trib­ute to Di­ef­fen­thaller, they recog­nised her as a pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cate for a strong Caribbean film in­dus­try and hailed West­wood Park (1997–2004) as “a sig­na­ture achieve­ment in T&T film pro­duc­tion for its dra­mat­ic in­sight in­to the lives of mid­dle-class Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.”

West­wood Park ran for six sea­sons. Speak­ing in the trib­ute video for Di­ef­fen­thaller’s Ansa Award, Pro­fes­sor of Gen­der and Cul­ture Stud­ies, Pro­fes­sor Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed, said of the se­ries, “Un­con­scious­ly, per­haps what West­wood Park does, is that it does give you an in­sight in­to the kinds of re­la­tion­ships be­tween the class­es and the way in which maybe peo­ple from the dif­fer­ent class­es think about each oth­er.”

She was di­ag­nosed with Stage 5 re­nal fail­ure in 2018 and was in need of a kid­ney trans­plant. The covid-19 pan­dem­ic forced the shut­down of the trans­plant unit. When it restart­ed in 2022, her fam­i­ly or­gan­ised a star-stud­ded con­cert to raise funds and re­cruit pos­si­ble donors.

Her child, Xi­ca Di­ef­fen­thaller-Lee-Poy, start­ed a Go­FundMe to help de­fray the cost of treat­ment. It al­so de­tails the fam­i­ly’s frus­tra­tion with what they de­scribed as the slow process of wait­ing for a trans­plant via the pub­lic health sys­tem. Sev­er­al years on dial­y­sis caused dam­age to her heart, for which she re­quired surgery and had to heal be­fore once again prepar­ing for a pos­si­ble trans­plant, the cost of which prompt­ed the fam­i­ly to launch a sec­ond Go­FundMe.

Di­ef­fen­thaller-Lee-Poy’s plea ends with, “My moth­er still has a lot to of­fer this coun­try and the world, and I wouldn’t want to lose her from this dis­ease.”

Fu­ner­al arrange­ments are yet to be an­nounced.