Deep Blue

Howard L.D. Allen

Howard Allen is a film and television director/producer and the founder of HAMA Productions. While his career in television spans more than 35 years, he made his feature film directorial debut in 2001 with the release of The Sweetest Mango a romantic comedy based on how he and his wife met and fell in love.
The Sweetest Mango became Antigua and Barbuda’s first locally produced feature film and the first indigenous feature film for the Eastern Caribbean. It has become an iconic film that is still being screened after appearing at several film festivals in North America and the Caribbean and made its world-television premiere on the Caribbean Cable Network Caribvision via DirecTV. It is now archived at the Toronto International Film Festival Bell Lightbox Reference Library.
Howard’s directorial credits also include No Seed (2002) a drama and Diablesse (2005), Caribbean folklore. He wrote the screenplay for his fourth film The Skin (2011) a supernatural thriller starring Jamaican film icon Carl Bradshaw.
Howard’s fifth film “Deep Blue” premiered in Antigua & Barbuda in March 2023.
Howard’s work as a filmmaker has been singled out by the department of Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College in New York, for his innovative approach to filmmaking in a developing country. He has conducted master classes at Ithaca College on “Feature Filmmaking on a Shoestring Budget.”
He has also conducted UNICEF funded television production workshops for the government of Antigua and Barbuda. In collaboration with the Caribbean Broadcast Partnership on HIV/AIDS and UNECSO he has trained 30 young producers across the Caribbean to produce content for television.
In 2008 Howard was recognized by the Youth Department in the Ministry of Education in Antigua & Barbuda with a “Young Pioneers” award for his inspiring work as a pioneer in filmmaking in Antigua & Barbuda.
Howard hopes by building a cadre of future film industry professionals, filmmaking will become an important part of Caribbean cultural expression.