ttff celebrates ten years with ten classic Caribbean films

The trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) today unveiled the first selections for this year’s edition of the Festival with the announcement that ten classic Caribbean films will form part of the 2015 lineup.

These ten films will screen in a special sidebar to the main programme, in honour of the ttff’s tenth anniversary. The Festival takes place from September 15–29.

“Many people are unaware that there has been a Caribbean film industry for quite some time, or that almost every country in the region has produced feature films,” said Bruce Paddington, ttff Founder and Festival Director. “We are therefore very proud to present ten of the very best classic films from the Caribbean that will help one to appreciate and enjoy the rich diversity of the region.”

Comprising films from nine different countries, the sidebar ranges across the English-, Spanish-, French- and Dutch-speaking sections of the region.

The lineup includes the Jamaican classic, The Harder They Come, and Bim, from T&T.

Memories of Underdevelopment, the oldest film in the lineup, is from 1968, while the most recent, Strawberry and Chocolate, was released in 1993. Both of those films hail from Cuba.

The full slate of films is as follows:

Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1968)
The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell, Jamaica, 1972)
Bim (Hugh A. Robertson, Trinidad and Tobago, 1974)
One People (Pim de la Parra, Suriname, 1976)
Sugar Cane Alley (Euzhan Palcy, Martinique, 1983)
One Way Ticket (Agliberto Menéndez, Dominican Republic, 1988)
What Happened to Santiago (Jacobo Morales, Puerto Rico, 1989)
Ava and Gabriel: A Love Story (Felix de Rooy, Curaçao, 1990)
The Man on the Shore (Raoul Peck, Haiti, 1993)
Strawberry and Chocolate (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, Cuba, 1993)

In addition to screening in honour of the Festival’s tenth anniversary, the classics also screen in recognition of the launch of the Caribbean Film Database, an online resource which, in the first instance, will present information on over 600 independent feature-length films made in and about the Caribbean. The database is co-financed by the ACP Cultures+ Programme (ACP Group of States), funded by the European Union (European Development Fund) and implemented by the ACP Group of States.

The rest of the lineup for the ttff/15 will be unveiled over the upcoming months.

Caption: A still from The Harder They Come