June 6, 2023
Multi Award winning filmmatker Uga Carlini is calling in to speak aboiut ANGELIENA and more from South Aftrica and Donna Williams Watson calling in about the movie HOPE IN THE DARK about her son Troy, addicted to opieates, who died of an overdose, after becoming a police informant.
Uga Carlini
Uga Carlini She is the co-founder of the production company, Towerkop Creations in 2010, which supports female driven stories. Her debut documentary short film, Good Planets Are Hard to Find, about Elizabeth Klarer. In 2016, she directed the feature documentary, Alison, based on the Marianne Thamm book, I Have Life, premiered at the Dances with Films Festival. She has also directed the music videos 17 shots, Die Deur, Wildste Oomblik and Beauty of Africa for the Sony Music Africa.
Donna Williams Watson
Donna Williams Watsons son became an informant for the police department. After testing positive several times while “on the job”, he was supposed to be terminated as an informant. Watson assumed her son died from a stroke or aneurysm possibly tied to his history of substance use. For 13 years, Howlett had struggled with an addiction resulting from a traumatic accident he suffered in high school. (Run over by a car, he became addicted to prescription pain pills. He did eight stints in rehab, Watson told me.) By the spring of 2018, Howlett was living with Watson and had been off drugs for close to six months, regaining some weight and doing well, she said. But one night, after meeting up with some old friends in Hopewell, a small, nearby town where Howlett was born and raised, the temptation grew too strong—Howlett relapsed and passed out behind the steering wheel of his parked station wagon, Watson told me. “People with substance-abuse issues—it’s so hard to be around that type of stuff and not do it,” Watson said. “So, he did that night.”
Tune in!!