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WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Siddharth is a film about the value of children.

The director, Richie Mehta, is a Canadian filmmaker. His first film was Amal (2007). In 2013, Siddharth, his second feature, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. On the website for the film, in the director’s notes, Mehta writes:

“In 2010, I met a man on the streets of Delhi, who asked me for help in finding a place called Dongri. I asked him what it was, he told me he thought it was where his lost son was (!).

“He went on to tell me his story—that he sent his 12-year-old boy away to work, and never saw him again. He believed his son was kidnapped and trafficked. After the initial shock wore off, I asked him for more details—a photograph, the spelling of his son’s name. He couldn’t answer any of them (being illiterate, and having never taken a picture). Since he was obliged to work every day to support his wife and daughter, all he could do was ask others for help. And he’d been doing this for over a year.

“Knowing that this man didn’t have the ability, nor the means, to even properly inquire about his son is an unfathomable tragedy. He barely understood why this kind of thing happens, much less how.

“This film is my attempt to reconcile my extremely layered relationship with this circumstance. It’s a story made up in equal parts by tragedy and optimism, and I hope what we’ve done here transmits even a fraction of the confusion, sorrow, helplessness, and ultimately, hope that I felt in meeting this man.”

This is exactly what takes place in the film. The audience is taken on a 96-minute journey with Mahendra, Siddharth’s father, experiencing every excruciating day that goes by when looking for his son, who he sent to a trolley factory to earn more income. As in the real-life situation, Mahendra does not find his son. Sadly, this is not a rarity and not exclusive to any particular country. According to statistics, in 2009, it was estimated that 1.2 million children were trafficked worldwide for sexual exploitation, including for prostitution or the production of sexually exploitative images.

According to a report by the National Human Rights Commission of India, only 10% of human trafficking in that country is international—almost 90% is interstate. Nearly 40,000 children are abducted every year, of which 11,000 remain untraced.

One of the things that I find most admirable about Siddharth is that it does not force-feed the story to the audience. It does not exploit your emotions by presenting Siddharth in dangerous and hurtful circumstances. Rather, the story is told through the family’s desperate efforts to find Siddharth; and through the heartache of Mahendra’s financial woes, which he must surmount, day after tiresome day, to buy bus fare and investigate any leads he finds in order to make progress in finding his son. This allows the audience to understand the social and economic situation of Siddharth’s family, as well as the pervasive societal attitudes to child abduction: resigned acceptance and nonchalance.

This incited much ire within me and took me back to a comment made by Ms Jearlean McDowell, a teacher at Success Laventille Secondary School in T&T, who helped facilitate the making of Miquel Galofré’s ttff/14 world-premiere documentary Art Connect: “Children are really our future and they are suffering so much trauma. We need to help them and stop all of the trauma.”

According to a 2013 report, T&T has been put on a human-trafficking watchlist by the US State Department. The report listed T&T as “a destination and transit country for adults and children subjected to sex trafficking and adults subjected to forced labour.” Our country is a destination, source and transit country for women and children subjected to trafficking, specifically for forced prostitution, and children and men subjected to forced labour.

While I can commend the cinematography of Siddharth, which shows the captivating and bustling street life of Delhi, or the true grittiness of living under the poverty line in India, it would not capture the heart of the film. The heart of the film lies in the closing scene, where Mahendra has no choice but to continue to work and take care of his wife and daughter and hope that his son will return one day. The heart of the film lies in its reality and true-to-life form.

One audience member commented, “This film was very moving and I leave the theatre thinking about all of the children who have been lost and will never be found.” Clearly, I was not the only one who left the theatre broken-hearted.

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WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Even though I have seen many African diaspora films, I did not have a specific film vocabulary for Nigerian films because I haven’t been exposed to that cinema. I am very pleased that my initiation into that world comes via Andrew Dosunmu.

Andrew Dosunmu is a Nigerian photographer and filmmaker who came to prominence in the United States after directing music videos for various acclaimed artists. His debut feature, Restless City (ttff/12), premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Mother of George (2013), his most recent film, also premiered at Sundance.

The story unfolds around the wedding of Ayodele, the owner of a Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn, and his fiancée, Adenike. Their traditional Yoruba wedding culminates in a ceremony where Adenike is named for her yet-to-be-conceived son, George. As someone who has enjoyed freedom over my own body and a choice as to how and when I will have children, I immediately felt oppressed and trapped by this traditional ceremony. I was left wondering, is the sole function of these traditional marriages to reproduce?

As the months pass without pregnancy, the audience can actually feel the mounting pressure from her mother-in-law and Adenike’s inclination to leave off with her Yoruba culture and immerse herself more in her new American life, encouraged by her friend Sade. Unfortunately her attempts to earn money for herself or try American fashion are shut down by Ayodele and Adenike is left to cling to her traditional way of life to please her community. I think that Dosunmu does an amazing job of intertwining the feel of American films and their synonymous promise of dreams and freedom with that of the feel and grain of culture in African films.

After Adenike makes every effort to address the fertility issues in her marriage, she buckles under the massive pressure of a childless 18 months of marriage, Eventually, by the encouragement of her mother-in-law, she decides to sleep with her husband’s brother to try to get pregnant. Her mother-in-law insists, “It is the same blood.”

To me, this is a rather extreme measure. However, even with this thinking, Dosomnu shows the differences between Nigerian traditional culture and more modern Westernised cultural standards. This role of the mother-in-law represents a very interesting theme of tradition and family and how close-knit an immigrant family can be when trying to maintain their sense of home and community. It also poses questions of assimilation and speaks to the realities of problem-solving as an individual versus as a community in a traditional space, especially when modern methods are available and not as oppressive.

Mother of George is such a multifaceted film, shot with both physical and metaphorical textures and layers. The director’s background as a fashion photographer (not to mention Bradford Young’s stunning cinematography) lend colour and artistic flair to this portrait of Nigerian immigrant family life.

These themes of family life, tradition, fertility, a woman’s role, immigrant life, assimilation, sexuality and marriage are all universal themes that define our humanity and anyone who watches this film will be able to connect with and appreciate this window into another culture.

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WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Wow.

Holy crap. This film…. First of all, the beginning was so riveting that I didn’t even realise that I was holding my breath for the entire opening sequence. I spent the majority of time with a tense body and with my hands ready to cover my face as I anticipated the scenes.

Of Good Report induced a physical reaction in me. From the middle of the film to an hour after the film ended I felt like I was going to throw up. I suffered an allergic reaction and was wired until about 4am. Moreover, when driving home, I thought that the Afro-Trinidadian man wearing glasses with an oval face who pulled up at the lights next to me was Mr Sithole, come to follow me home and abduct me. Oh, the imagination of a writer. Still though, the film gets to you on a visceral level. It’s kind of like Dexter on steroids.

Of Good Report is a film by Jahmil XT Qubeka, a South African filmmaker. Parker Sithole arrives in a poor rural township to begin a new job as a teacher at the local school. The audience is treated to some intentionally vague flashbacks as they try to piece together this man’s character, a task made extremely difficult by the fact that we do not hear him utter one single sentence during the entire film (a detail which concretises the creepiness of his character).

He appears to be of unimpeachable character yet almost immediately he begins an affair with a student, 16-year-old Nolitha. Soon the true nature of this seemingly mild-mannered man is revealed: Parker is a bloody psychopath. As the film progresses, the flashbacks become more intense in detail and impact and then, in a climatic, gut wrenchingly murderous scene, Parker confronts his antagonist, the ghost of his dead mother, and is left to deal with the consequences to his actions.

The film is shot in black and white, a perfect stratagem for conjuring the hair-raising feel of the piece. The noirish Hitchcockian quality of the film immediately establishes an aesthetic that gives you the feeling of being on the edge of a very sharp knife. The sound design is equally evocative.

Mothusi Magano as Parker Sithole is exquisite. The only vocal expressions that the audience gets from him are jubilant laughter or guttural, excruciating screams. Yet he says so much with his eerily observant eyes and placid face, even as he is sawing the body of his ex-lover to pieces and placing those pieces in plastic bags. No wonder this film was banned before its premiere at the Durban International Film Festival.

I also appreciated the use of literary motifs such as Othello in grounding the story and simultaneously lending it a wonderfully macabre theatrical element.

When I asked audience members about their experience post film, one woman said that she quite enjoyed the film but found it anticlimactic. When I asked if she found that the level of violence was too much, she said no. One man commented that it was brilliant and quite reminiscent of Bates Motel. His friend agreed that it was well done, even though it was quite disturbing—definitely not something that she could watch twice.

Of Good Report it a great film. It is entirely provocative and brings to light issues regarding child molestation, teacher-student relationships, under-aged sex, pregnancy, abortion, family relations and psychological health. More than that, these issues are presented in a haunting manner that you are sure never to forget.

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Manakamana is a spiritual experience.

True, it is filmed inside a cable car that is transporting its passengers to a temple in the foothills of the Nepalese Himalayas dedicated to Manakamana, the Hindu goddess of good fortune. However, the ethereal experience of the film does not only belong to the passengers but also to us, the audience, the voyeurs.

The work is filmed with a fixed 16mm camera and records eleven, roughly eight-and-half-minute trips to and from the temple. This gives the audience the depth of time to watch, listen, observe and internalise these pilgrims. In this hypnotising act of looking, we become pilgrims ourselves, enthralled in a simultaneous internal and external exploration of landscapes.

Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez are the filmmakers behind this work. Stephanie Spray is a filmmaker, phonographer and anthropologist who has been working at the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory at Harvard University since 2006. Her work exploits different media to explore the confluence of social aesthetics and art in everyday life. Since 1999 she has spent much of her time in Nepal, roaming its mountains; studying its music, religion and language; and making films. Pacho Velez’s work sits at the intersection of ethnography, structuralism and political documentary. Though shot in different countries, using distinct formal strategies, his films share a preoccupation with local responses to broad changes wrought by globalisation. He teaches at Bard College.

The influences of the two filmmakers are reflected in the situation of the work geographically, both on a temporal and otherworldly level. The nuances of culture, gender, nationality, age, and marital status are all revealed to us on this journey.

As a trio of elderly women, a pair of young Canadian tourists, a husband and wife, three young men, two musicians and a small herd of goats each take their trip above the rich and verdant landscape, a character study ensues. Each entity is occupying space that someone else previously did. However, even thought they may be travelling along the same route and may have the same destination, they are all worlds apart.

One of the things that I will carry forever with me of this film is the feeling that not only was I watching these people, but that they were watching me too. The camera lens felt like a two-way portal. That feeling of being connected to another time, space and entity engendered feeling of meditative peace and tranquility. It sparked a complex internal dialogue that could not be translated with words.

Manakamana is probably the furthest thing away from Hollywood that I have seen, at least in a long time. It is breathtaking in the boundaries that it challenges and transcendental in its quiet ambition.

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Behaviour, an incisive portrait of the life of an at-risk boy in Havana, claimed the top prize at the 2014 trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) in an awards ceremony held in Port of Spain this evening.

Directed by Cuba’s Ernesto Daranas Serrano, Behaviour beat out four other films to nab the Best Narrative Feature prize at the Festival. Behaviour was also a favourite with the Festival’s youth jury, who awarded the film a special mention.

The youth jury gave its top prize to a Brazilian film, the charming LGBT-themed coming-of-age drama The Way He Looks, directed by Daniel Ribeiro.

Best Documentary Feature was awarded to a film from the Dominican Republic, Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada’s You and Me, an intimate look at the complex relationship between an elderly woman and her domestic servant.

A documentary was also the winner of the Best Trinidad and Tobago Feature Film—Miquel Galofré’s Art Connect, an uplifting crowd-pleaser featuring young people from the urban community of Laventille in east Port of Spain, whose lives are transformed when they undertake an art project.

The inaugural Amnesty International Human Rights Prize went to The Abominable Crime, Micah Fink’s touching, troubling reflection of the struggle gays and lesbians in Jamaica face to achieve their rights.

Here is a full list of the awards:

Best Narrative Feature: Behaviour, Ernesto Daranas Serrano, Cuba

Best Narrative Feature, Special Mention: Sensei Redemption, German Gruber, Curaçao

Best Documentary Feature: You and Me, Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada, Dominican Republic

Best Documentary Feature, Special Mention: Hotel Nueva Isla, Irene Gutiérrez and Javier Labrador, Cuba

Best Short Film, Narrative: Bullock, Carlos Machado Quintela, Cuba

Best Short Film, Documentary: ABCs, Diana Montero, Cuba

Best Trinidad and Tobago Feature: Art Connect, Miquel Galofré

Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Narrative: Dubois, Kaz Ové

Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Narrative, Special Mention: Noka: Keeper of Worlds, Shaun Escayg

Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Documentary: Field Notes, Vashti Harrison

Best New Media Film: They Say You Can Dream a Thing More Than Once: Versia Harris, Barbados

Amnesty International Human Rights Prize: The Abominable Crime, Micah Fink, Jamaica/USA

BPTT Youth Jury Prize for Best Film: The Way He Looks, Daniel Ribeiro, Brazil

BPTT Youth Jury Prize for Best Film, Special Mention: Behaviour, Ernesto Daranas Serrano, Cuba

People’s Choice Award, Best Narrative Feature: A Story About Wendy 2, Sean Hodgkinson, T&T

People’s Choice Award, Best Documentary Feature: Art Connect, Miquel Galofré, T&T

People’s Choice Award, Best Short Film: Flying the Coup, Ryan Lee, T&T

RBC: Focus Filmmakers’ Immersion Pitch Prize: Raisa Bonnet, Puerto Rico

RBC: Focus Filmmakers’ Immersion Pitch Prize, Special Mention: Davina Lee, St Lucia

Best Student at the Film Programme of the University of the West Indies: Romarlo Anderson Edghill

Best Trinidad and Tobago Film in Development: Rajah: The Story of Boysie Singh, Christian James

Image: A still from Behaviour

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Kiki Álvarez was born in Havana in 1961, and has a degree in Art History, Communication Theory and Screenwriting. He is currently the head of the fiction film programme at Cuba’s International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV). He is the director of several acclaimed short and feature-length films, including our ttff/14 selection, Giraffes, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

In this story, Manuel and Lia are a young couple desperate to find accommodation in Havana. They manage to illegally lay their hands on the keys to an old house in the city centre. If that didn’t put enough of a strain on their relationship, the previous occupant, Tania, who had actually been evicted, refuses to give up her home. A silent, tense and provocative domestic war among these three beautiful, vulnerable, volatile twenty-somethings ensues and plays out as an impending hurricane places them under lockdown.

Our blogger Aurora Herrera got a chance to speak with Kiki Álvarez ahead of his trip to T&T for the screening of his film.

 What made this interplay between the three protagonists attractive to you? 

Giraffes was born from an idea of Claudia Muñiz [the film’s scriptwriter and one of the two lead actresses]; she conceived the story and wrote the screenplay based on general and personal experiences. It just gave me a premise to work from that also guaranteed that my ideas about the production design would allow me to control the direction and staging and also to work with the actors how I wanted to in order to achieve the things I wanted to explore in their characters.

Many of the scenes seem very organic and as if you let the three actors improvise and feed off of the others’ energy. How much of a role did the script play when shooting? 

To ensure that air of spontaneity that runs through the film I made sure to test very little; there are only two scenes that I thought were fundamental for the definition of the characters and the to establish the tone of the relationships between them. Then the rest was playing around every day, finding the specificity of each moment and how to film it. My idea was that the actors seek and generate energy in every moment, energy that would make us pay attention and be outstanding enough to document.

Now, to defend this idea of an interactive style in my direction, I have to know how to receive, use, and conduct energy and creativity offered to me by the actors, creative people and technicians working in my films.

Why do you finally decide to show Lia’s work life outside of the house?

This is the most controversial film sequence; writing for the purists and the unity of time and space that suggests the film is a dramaturgical error, but I long ago gave up self-imposing rules of this type. At that moment in the story no one wants to leave the house to see what will continue to happen between Tania and Manuel but Claudia and I wanted was to go for a walk to Chinatown to explore Lia’s mood.

Ironically, this sequence works like a Chinese box; breaking the story with the expectations that have been generated with all of the mystery and lack of Western psychological explanation that usually make for tall tales. Why is it that Lia does what the client asks and what are the consequences for the story? We do not know and I do not care to elucidate. It is a beautiful mystery; sometimes in life you do not ask what and why you do and that may or may not have consequences. I think we often forget that films talk about life, and life tends not to ask for any explanations sometimes.

Are you trying to hint at anything with the relationship between Manuel and Lia? (She is a working woman and he stays at home all day; however she says that when he would hug her it was so tight she felt her bones would break.) Is love enough to sustain that kind of relationship?

Manuel’s love is everything to Lia and she does not need to explain it to live it with life-long intensity. We are the spectators, the voyeurs of that story, and we need to explain why. I think Manuel is the most complex and difficult-to-define character; he looks like a crackpot, a pushover, immature, sometimes a jerk, but is slowly discovering a sensitivity and attitude to life. Lia already knows it and Tania discovers it eventually. Towards the end of his song, he defines himself: a giraffe, one that has no voice because his voice is so different than the rest that men do not listen. To answer your question, I think that love is never enough and in the case of Lia she confronts him with such intensity that far from sinking, it carries his passion.

When you envisioned the film, did you have any parameters for the sex scenes or did you let the actors decide what they were comfortable with? 

The first thing we shot was the sex scene between Lia and Manuel when the film begins. For me it was essential to create comfort between the actors and crew; nudity and sex had to be natural, everyday. Also, it had to be with the agreement of Claudia and my complicity with her was crucial.

How long did the shooting process take?

We shot in 15 days. It was something that we made sure from design and production through a small team that was multifunctional and highly concentrated. If one knows how to shorten preparation times from one shot to another, and this is something that digital cinema allows, you can shoot in half the time that we were accustomed to with the poor production times the analog film demanded.

What’s next for you?

Our new film is called Venice and has just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to a very good reception from the public and critics. This is the synopsis: Monica, Violet and Mayelin work in a beauty salon. On payday they go out to buy a dress for one of them, starting an unexpected journey into the depths of the Havana nightlife. At dawn, exhausted and penniless, they start dreaming of opening a beauty shop of their own, which they will call Venice.

Do you have anything to add?

I am very happy to present Giraffes in Trinidad and Tobago. We are Caribbean islands and it’s important for us to know more about each other. At the very least, I make films for that, to expose and to learn.

The final ttff/14 screening of Giraffes takes place on Friday 26 September, 8.30pm at MovieTowne, Port of Spain. The director will be present.

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One of the main goals of the ttff is the continuous development of the local and Caribbean film industry. At ttff/14, a variety of panels, presentations and workshops are being held.

Last Monday morning a script development session for producers, hosted by European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE), was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Clare Downs, a script consultant from the UK, worked with the participants, introducing the main script development tools and seeking to strengthen their understanding of narrative principles.

Clare kicked off the session by establishing the importance of themes. She noted the following:

• Themes arise from the resolution of the conflict
• Themes reveal how a character has or has not changed
• The experience of the journey reveals the meaning and theme of the story
• Issues and ideas are not be confused with themes

One of the central points of Clare’s presentation was the importance of a note of intention for scriptwriters.

“Everybody in the development process should write out note of intention,” she said. “You need to establish why you want to make this film and what drives your curiosity. Ask yourself, ‘What is my film about?’ Not issues, but what do you think it’s about?’”

She advised that the producer should also write a note of intention; that is, why they are connecting to that particular story and what they think it’s about. During the process, one should always revise the note of intention, and it is important to see if these notes of intention between the writer and the producer match. Also, when you go to raise funds and submit your treatment and your script, an extremely good note of intention can make a big difference.

“That’s a good way to put yourself inside the development vortex,” she said. “Then ask the director to write their own note of intention. If they have a completely different take, then you decide if you want them or not.”

Clare also spoke about deciding how stories end; is the story being told a story in balance, or out of balance?

“I find that happy and sad endings are rather closed,” she said. “When you consider whether or not a story is in balance or out of balance and the main character can put things relatively in place or vice versa, the story can take on a different resonance, rather than having just a happy or sad ending.”

The importance of critical thinking versus analytical thinking also featured prominently in her presentation.

“There is nothing worse for a writer to say, ‘I don’t like that character.’ That is an example of critical thinking and it closes down a conversation. They are not being analytical. It would be much better to ask questions and use a Socratic method like ‘Why did you decide to do this with the character?’ and let your writer explain and have a real dialogue.”

She pointed out that rhythm is very important in a script and as a producer, you must read lots of scripts and utilize that analytic thinking.

“You can be more critical during brainstorming at the beginning of the development process, then the job is to be analytical,” she said.

Another concept that Clare introduced to workshop participants was the “white-hot first draft” which is basically the first version of the script.

“In this version of the script, writers are able to focus on what is compelling about the characters and the story and what raises their curiosity,” she advised. “Then, the producer can use it for the development of the treatment.”

Clare also broke down the method of building the story through sequences and rhythm, not scenes, a very important differentiation.

“There are eight sequences and every sequence has a function and the end of each sequence sets up the next sequence,” she said. “The first sequence is the routine of life, where you introduce the main character, other secondary characters and the antagonist, hidden or obvious. Exposition of the world comes through conflict, as the characters are revealed. In the first sequence you also set up the point of attack, also known as the inciting incident or the hook where something happens to throw the main character out of balance. Keep in mind that the point of attack relates to the genre.

“The second sequence is collision,” she continued. “At the end of the first act we have the main tension, that is, where we know what the main character wants, and the tension between what we hope that they will achieve it, but we equally have to fear that they will not get what they want. For us to fear, we need to plant the seeds of antagonism in our first act.

“The more you have an equal tension between hope and fear the better. Uncertainty is the great principle of drama and the viewer needs to be emotionally connected to the story between their hope and their fear.

“Then you have two sequences of rising action where the character gets closer to what they want at the Midpoint. Then you build point where they have the twist and the main character has two sequences of falling action where forces of antagonism are in control at this point of the story. At the end of the second act comes a twist where they are in crisis. They are faced with a new tension, where they now have, or have not, to address what they need. Then comes the climax, when the main character confronts the antagonist, and then finds a resolution. In a world in balance, they are able to get what they need and overcome the antagonist. In a world out of balance the antagonist is triumphant.”

Clare also encouraged participants to be sure to differentiate between the main character and the central character when developing scripts.

“The person who is the main character has the biggest amount of baggage to deal with,” she said. “The story turning points are based on them. The central character reflects more thematic concerns.”

She also pointed out that writers should pay attention to foreshadowing, planting and paying off to establish a strong emotional ending.

For her last piece of advice she encouraged writers not to be boring and predictable when creating the antagonist. Remember, we are ourselves are antagonists to those who desire what we want. Write your characters from the inside out. Plot emerges from character, not vice versa.

 

 

 

 

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Last Friday night, a package of short films—comprised mostly of T&T films, all but one of which had their world premiere—screened at the ttff/14. The package featured Hidden Avenue, directed by Daniel Ahye (T&T); Last Night, directed by Ayesha Jordan (T&T); How Many Times, directed by Ryan Khan (T&T); The Cutlass, directed by Darisha Beresford; Cleaning House (T&T), directed by Toni Blackford (Jamaica); and Flying the Coup; directed by Ryan Lee (T&T).

Hidden Avenue stood out for me because of the rhythmic spoken-word voice over, which told the story of a young man who is a member of a charity organisation. However, as with all things that seem to involved money in our beloved country, corruption unfolds before his very eyes. The protagonist chooses to do nothing and subsequently must face the consequences of his inaction. The four-minute narrative is Ahye’s first offering at the ttff and began as the subject matter for a song competition. The film was a course submission and had to follow the themes of accountability and transparency. Derron Sandy wrote the spoken word piece and the video came together in just a matter of days. It is definitely encouraging to see creative people coming together from different fields to collaborate on a film. These diverse backgrounds give texture to the work.

Last Night is Ayesha Jordan’s third submission to the Festival, and received great applause from the audience at the screening. It focuses on a young girl who awakes in the middle of the night and has an encounter with a strange entity. Honestly, I had trouble sleeping that night because I kept thinking about this film. I do believe that that is an indicator of the film’s success. One audience member complimented her team on the score of the piece, saying that it achieved the air of oppression befitting a horror. A very interesting fact is that the story is based on a story written by the little girl who stars in the film. Jordan’s film reveals her talent to create the exact intended atmosphere that the genre of the film depicts. Her previous Festival entries were a rom-com and a drama, and she maintains that she experiments with different genres in order to keep her work new and to paint a story that people would always be interested in.

How Many Times? is a story about a woman who is about to get married who finds out that her abusive mother has been released from prison. I know the filmmaker Ryan Khan personally and was very happy to hear that this film screened at the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival. Suffice to say, I was expecting a lot from the film. According to Khan, the film, which took two years to shoot and one year to edit, is an experiment in visual language. The film definitely grabs your senses and simultaneously draws you in and evokes an emotive response, without much dialogue. As film critic Kaleem Aftab said in his workshop last week, “When we watch a film we should separate the dialogue from the visual image. Film is a visual medium and the visual should take precedence over dialogue.” In my opinion, Khan can consider his experiment in visual language a success.

The Cutlass, directed by Darisha Beresford, is based on a true story of a kidnapping crime in T&T. The eleven-minute narrative was written and produced by Tenille Newallo. I would like to say kudos to the team for bringing these issues to light in such a dramatic and creative way. It is great to know that the woman who had this happen to her is very supportive of the entire project. These are stories that need to be told because they open up very important dialogues around crime, kidnapping and the abuse of women in our country, issues that define our daily lives but are usually dismissed. In the Q&A after the screening, Newallo pointed out that she felt it was important for a woman to direct the film. Newallo insisted that despite creative license, the film has stayed as close as possible to the original story, where the true essence of the story, her bravery, and the mental battle between the two characters, has not changed. As Newallo pointed out, it is a story of human struggle and triumph.

Cleaning House was quite enjoyable to watch. Directed by Toni Blackford, a Jamaican writer and director, the film tells the story of Susan, a seemingly quiet and pensive housecleaner who takes her job seriously. The film unfolds as she receives a phone calls and then heads off to a job. She cleans the house of the person who requested a housekeeper but then she drugs him and begins to search through his apartment. The homeowner is then revealed to be a psychopathic pervert. Blackford has done a great job of keeping the film tight and focused. The storyline is interesting, the cinematography is great and the actors are very believable. There was not a second that went by that I was not engrossed in the film. Also, judging by the resounding applause from the audience, they enjoyed it as well. I think we are all looking forward to seeing more from Blackford.

Absolutely hilarious! That’s my take on Flying the Coup, the second film in this year’s festival directed by Ryan Lee, a graduate of the UWI Film Programme. His other short, Cubes, evoked the same belly-bursting laughter as this 24-minute film. In this film, set during the 1990 attempted coup, the neighbourhood troublemaker accidentally ends up teaming up with a police officer on his first day of work in order to escape Port of Spain. They trip over each other’s personalities as they try to escape the chaos-filled streets of the capital. The entire audience at the Little Carib Theatre was in stitches throughout the film. A great cast supports the writing—actors who know how to communicate comedy with their body language and facial expressions, which tickles the funny bone of viewers, frame after frame. Shooting a period film is always a challenge; however Lee applies his creativity well to meet this issue. During the Q&A, Lee commented that he initially wanted to do a serious piece about that episode in our country’s history but was met with some opposition. While I do hope that Lee gets to pursue his creative goals, I for one am really glad that this comedy was created. A definite must-see in this year’s Festival.

Image: a still from Flying the Coup

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This past Saturday, the ttff held a film appreciation workshop at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The workshop targeted film enthusiasts—that is, people who may not be interested in making films but are still fascinated by questions of cinema, image making and meaning in general.

The workshop was facilitated by Kaleem Aftab, a British film writer for the Independent and National newspapers as well as Filmmaker magazine. He is also the author of Spike Lee’s authorised biography, Spike Lee; That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It.

During the three-hour workshop, Aftab utilised different films to guide the participants in how to analyse films. Particular points that he covered were typecasting, the use of montage (editing), jump cuts and the use of technology. Aftab showed clips from various films like The Outsiders, Pulp Fiction, The Celebration, La Dolce Vita, Do the Right Thing and others to demonstrate these points.

Here are some excerpts from Aftab’s presentation.

On story and characterisation 

“A bad critic will just tell you the story; but films are not just about what happens in the movie but what happens with the character and how the character builds up. We can’t keep thinking that the plot is all of it.”

On context

“When thinking about film appreciation, it is a good idea to examine film history and how the industry developed over time.”

On the role of technology in filmmaking

“Films are not just a product of time and place but also capability; the tools at the disposal of filmmakers over time. We can’t think in the same way about the films made in 1950 and the films made today because of the technology available to make them. In the 1950s in Germany, the beauty of their films was the way they used light and shade and very long shadows. That was their version of 3D.”

On empathy and realism

“The more empathy we have with the characters, the more a movie means to us. This leads us into immersive realism. Many documentaries use this technique. Normally the realism of movies is not the realism of life but because it is the movie we accept the language of movies. Now fiction films are being made like documentaries to get that sense of immersive realism.”

On technology (again)

“Talking more about technology, what is important? Is it that we want to be wowed by the film or do we want to be taken on a journey? If we want to be wowed, the film becomes totally different. You also need to ask, ‘When is the director helping us and when is he manipulating us?’”

On the importance of the director

“The story and background of the director is also important. We need to know who he is and what stories he tells. Fellini has a background in vaudeville and the circus and was interested in exploring the eccentricities of life as well as the internal struggle of people and we see those influences play out in his films.”

On acting and typecasting

“In terms of good acting and bad acting, we have to ask ourselves, “Is it bad acting, or a bad choice of movie, and does the audience refuses to see the actor in a different role?” Bad acting is when we see an actor and we don’t believe them in a role. All actors have strengths and weakness and it is hard to think of one that can do everything. Also, sometimes actors are given bad scripts and no matter how much they try to bring the story to life, a bad script can make it difficult to do that.”

On going beyond Hollywood

“One of the problems with film appreciation is that things that are not American are dismissed. There is fascism in film appreciation that we have to appreciate one type of film, like the ‘Oscar’ film. You have to remember to be open-minded and appreciate things about life in other cultures.”

On the future of cinema

“I think the latest trend in film is what part the audience has to play in the democracy of film. With YouTube and other platforms, they are reinventing films all the time, creating parodies and telling the stories in new ways. So essentially, there is no final version of a film now.”

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The trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) is teaming up with New Fire, a new concert series on the local music landscape, to present We Are New Fire, a concert featuring some of the top alternative acts in T&T.

The concert takes place this Thursday 25 September at D Nu Pub aka Mas Camp, at the corner of Ariapita Avenue and French Street in Woodbrook, from 9pm to 11pm. Admission is $60, payable on the door.

The formidable lineup for the show is:

Gillian Moor & Bush Tea Party
Solman
Nickolai Salcedo
Marge Blackman
Orange Sky
St. Ans
jointpop
Freetown Collective

For more information, email newfirett@gmail.com or call 492-7516.

Image: jointpop