trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2010
Duration	23 minutes
Type	Dramatic short
Country	Trinidad and Tobago
Language	English
Director(s)	Renée Pollonais
Rating	14 And Over
Contact	renpollonais@yahoo.com

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Heathcliff is an unfulfilled man nearing retirement. Merlin, his wife of 35 years, is controlling and critical, especially of him. One Saturday morning as they prepare to drive to the market, Merlin begins to lay into Heathcliff. When Heathcliff finally expresses what really is on his mind, he loses more than he is prepared to handle.

World premiere.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2008
Duration	7 minutes
Type	Dramatic short
Country	UK
Language	English
Director(s)	Katy Milner
Rating	All Ages
Contact	katy.milner@ntlworld.com

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London, 1948. Georgie has recently arrived in England from Jamaica. In a letter home to his sweetheart Vonnie, Georgie details his experiences and impressions, as he seeks housing, finds a job, and tries to get used to English food. Georgie would like Vonnie to join him in London for a spell, before they return to Jamaica and settle for good. Yet will one English winter become something much more?

Awards: Winner, BFM Short Film Challege 2008

Trinidad & Tobago premiere.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2009
Duration	7 minutes
Type	Documentary short
Country	Dominica/France
Language	Kwéyòl, French and English, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Pierre Deschamps
Rating	All Ages
Contact	www.pierredeschamp.com

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Jerry Maka West is a Rastafarian who lives a simple life in Dominica’s forested interior, his Zion. Here he grows and prepares his food just as his grandparents taught him. Jerry skips in and out of the modern world, never really being drawn into it. Instead, he prefers to remain close to nature, working hard to put in as much as he takes out, in harmony with a living earth.

Trinidad & Tobago premiere.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2009
Duration	14 minutes
Type	Dramatic short
Country	Ethiopia
Language	Amharic, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Zelalem Woldemariam
Rating	All Ages
Contact	www.ethiopianfilminitiative.org

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This is a tale about the need for environmental conservation, couched in the touching story of a homeless boy in search of a meal. The elderly village schoolteacher promises the boy some money if he will help in a tree-planting exercise. Yet when he finally goes to buy a loaf of bread, he finds the money is missing.

Trinidad & Tobago premiere

Awards: Best Short Film – Youth Jury Award, Taarifa International Film Festival (2010).

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	1989
Duration	13 minutes
Type	Documentary short
Country	Brazil
Language	Portuguese, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Jorge Furtado
Rating	All Ages
Contact	n/a

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This is the ironic saga of a tomato. Beginning life on Mr Suzuki’s farm, the tomato is sold to a supermarket, where it is bought by Mrs Anete. At home, Mrs Anete decides the tomato is spoiled and throws it in the garbage. Together with the rest of the trash, the tomato is taken to a landfill. There, the best organic material becomes food for pigs, while the rest is given to poor women and children. A modern classic, Ilha das Flores is widely considered one of the greatest short films ever made.

Awards: Silver Bear, Berlin Film Festival 1990; Silver Daisy, Silver Daisy Awards, Brazil 1990

Trinidad & Tobago premiere.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2009
Duration	10 minutes
Type	Dramatic short
Country	Canada/Trinidad & Tobago
Language	English
Director(s)	Oliver Milne
Rating	PG
Contact	oliver.milne89@gmail.com

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Holden Bates, a US army medic in World War II, wakes up in the forest after having passed out from exhaustion. He searches for his platoon and comes across an old shack, and in it, a wounded Nazi soldier. Their encounter is one that Holden will never forget.

Trinidad & Tobago premiere.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2009
Duration	107 minutes
Type	Dramatic feature
Country	Haiti/France
Language	French, Creole and English, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Raoul Peck
Rating	18 And Over
Contact	contact@velvet-film.com

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High up in the mountains of northern Haiti is the towering Citadelle, from where the nation’s autocratic though “democratically” elected president, Jean de Dieu, effects his reign. Styling himself as an imperial monarch, the president keeps a paranoid eye on the television news and a lascivious one on his maidservant. All the while he ruthlessly stamps out opposition to his regime and enforces the rules with a chilling, erratic terror.

On the day that the president is set to welcome a host of foreign dignitaries in celebration of Haiti’s bicentennial, an uprising breaks out in the streets. As the uprising grows and his guests cancel on him one by one, the president comes undone, mumbling to himself like a mad Shakespearean king as fate closes in. Part elegant chamber drama, part absurdist political satire, Moloch Tropical is a scathing critique of absolute power and the corrupt legacy of colonial rule.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2010
Duration	98 minutes
Type	Documentary feature
Country	Brazil / UK
Language	Portuguese and English, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Lucy Walker
Rating	n/a
Contact	www.wastelandmovie.com

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“The moment when one thing turns into another is the most beautiful moment,” says Vik Muniz, the Brazilian artist at the centre of this extraordinary film. Shot over nearly three years, Waste Land follows Muniz, arguably his country’s top contemporary artist, as he journeys from his base in Brooklyn to the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of catadores—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials.

Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both dignity and despair as the catadores begin to re-imagine their lives. Waste Land is a stirring testament to the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

Trinidad + Tobago premiere.

Awards: Audience Award, World Cinema Documentary, Sundance Film Festival 2010; Panorama Audience Award, Amnesty International Film Award, Berlin Film Festival 2010; Audience Award, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2010; Golden Space Needle Award, Seattle International Film Festival 2010; Audience Award – World Cinema Best Documentary, Maui Film Festival 2010; HBO Audience Award – Best Documentary, Provincetown Film Festival 2010; Target Best Documentary Award, Dallas Film Festival 2010.

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2010
Duration	98 minutes
Type	Dramatic feature
Country	Venezuela
Language	Spanish, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Haik Gazarian
Rating	18 And Over
Contact	www.venezzia.com

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The year is 1942, and the world is at war. Venezuela is the largest supplier of oil to the Allies and thus of strategic importance. Frank Moore, a communications specialist with the US army, travels to a small town on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. He sets himself up in a cabin, not far from the residence of his superior, Commander Salvatierra. Frank’s mission is twofold: to protect oil tankers from possible U-boat attacks, and discover the identity of a Nazi spy within the Venezuelan army.

Frank becomes friendly with Commander Salvatierra’s wife, the beguiling Venezzia, who is partially blind. Soon the two are engaged in a passionate affair. Meanwhile, Frank suspects that he is being monitored, and is accused of being the very spy he is meant to be tracking. Will he and Venezzia find the happiness they so desperately seek, or does tragedy await them?

Trinidad + Tobago premiere.

Awards: Best International Film (Manhattan Film Festival 2010); Best Historical Film (Sonoma International Film Festival 2010); Best Romance Film (Amsterdam Film Festival 2010);  Best Film (Affma International Film Festival, Los Angeles 2009); Best Screenplay (Affma International Film Festival, Los Angeles 2009);  Best Actor (Canada International Film Festival 2010); Best Actress (El Universo del Espectáculo, Venezuela 2009); Excellence in Filmmaking – Silver Lei Award (Honolulu International Film Festival 2010)

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trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 screening

Year	2009
Duration	116 minutes
Type	Dramatic feature
Country	Colombia
Language	Spanish, with English subtitles
Director(s)	Ciro Guerra
Rating	All Ages
Contact	www.losviajesdelviento.net

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Ignacio Carrillo spent much of his life travelling through northern Colombia singing vallenato, a popular form of folk music. He accompanied himself on his legendary accordion, said to be cursed by the devil. Eventually Ignacio got married and gave up his itinerant ways, settling in a small town. When years later his wife suddenly dies, Ignacio decides to make a trek to the coast, to return his accordion to its previous owner, his former teacher and mentor.

Accompanying Ignacio is Fermin, a boy with romantic notions of becoming a juglar—a wandering musician—as Ignacio once was. Ignacio tries to discourage Fermin, as the life of a juglar brings only solitude and sadness. As they travel the awesome landscape—through savannah, desert and forest, and over mist-wreathed mountains—man and boy share a series of almost mystical adventures. These adventures not only bring them closer together, but also closer to their journey’s haunting, unexpected end.

Trinidad & Tobago premiere.

Awards: Best Colombian Film, Best Director, Bogota Film Festival 2009; Award of the City of Rome, Cannes Film Festival 2009; Best Colombian Film, Cartagena Film Festival 2010; Best Spanish Language Film, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2010

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