Wanted: Young People to watch and critique films

Now in its fourth year, the Youth Jury panel at the trinidad + tobago film festival (ttff)  offers five young people the chance of lifetime to see great films from all over the world, as well as learn the ‘how-to’s’ of critiquing them and gain exclusive access to some of the Festival’s major film events.

According to three members of the 2016 Youth Jury – Marc Angus Skinner, Christopher Lou-Hing and Asa Reyes – the experience was both amazing and transformational.

Nineteen-year-old Skinner described it as “spectacular”. “This [was] my first time sitting on a jury and I enjoyed interacting with people my own age. It was really wonderful to see different personalities interact, watch the same movie and come up with different conclusions…”

Lou-Hing, now a film student at University of the West Indies (UWI) stated, “I really didn’t know what to expect coming into the jury but it was so much more.” The 20-year-old said, “being on the jury really helped me with developing that critical eye when watching a film, which I think was a really good stepping stone into university for me”.

“I learned not just tolerance, but appreciation for things that I cannot easily identify with”, said 22-year-old Asa Reyes. “There was a need for  teamwork as I discovered each juror had their own perceptions of the different films.”  After serving on the youth Jury in 2016, Reyes returned to school to finish her  Bachelor’s Degree in Education.

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