Canada-born filmmaker Ian Harnarine returns to the land of his parents with a story to tell.

Bare naked in front of his people.

That’s how filmmaker Ian Harnarine will stand on September 20, when his feature film Doubles premiers at the opening of the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff).

The 18th edition of the festival, staged by the Filmmakers Collaborative of Trinidad and Tobago (FILMCO), opens on September 20 at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s and runs until September 27.

The story of a Trinidadian street vendor, who must travel to Toronto, Canada and decide if he will help save his estranged father from dying, Doubles, draws intimate parallels to Harnarine’s own life.

A week before the national budget, and on Republic Day, on Sunday at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Port of Spain, two persons with experience working in, and with profitable creative industries internationally, clamoured for Trinidad and Tobago to tap its creative industries, as a low-hanging fruit, for economic diversification.

Costa Rican Ambassador to T&T Lilly Edgerton Picado said she finds T&T’s creative industries so enormous it is “mind-blowing”. She was sharing tips at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) event at the 2017 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, on what T&T could do to make money from its creative industries, based on her experience in her own country.

Costa Rica was one of the countries featured in the August-released IDB paper “The Orange Economy”. The “orange economy” covers the creative industries, including the arts.

NOW nearing the end of its annual two-week run, the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival 2017 has once again brought to light more than 100 fabulous works of the creativity and the artistry of Caribbean peoples on screen, demonstrating the great capacity for story-telling across this region.Trinidad Express Newspapers_ Editorial _ Film festival treasury

Among this year’s offerings were three features on the importance, the relevance and the meaning of this country’s national instrument, the steelpan, to communities where they exist.

To Be A Renegade, a documentary directed by film-maker James O’Connor and produced with significant sponsorship and involvement of bpTT, is a story about the birth, the beginnings and the endurance of the band, known for decades now as BP Renegades.

From its birth in the heartland of the depressed East Port of Spain district, the band grew into a compelling force for positivity, headquartered on upper Charlotte Street.

Great focus was placed in this story, on the work of the band in nurturing young talent, with the existence of a junior band, which has captured the Junior Panorama title on four successive occasions.

It is the band management’s philosophy in action, of playing its part in coming between the energy of the area’s youth, and the possibility of falling into the society’s social cracks.

The members and the leadership of this “young Renegades” outfit tell their own tales, in their own words, about acknowledging the challenges, and equally about helping to provide alternatives for their peers. They learn the elements of leadership, of organisation, of social structure and of focus and discipline.

José lies awake at night, staring into the darkness of a grim future. By day he looks heartbreakingly young to bear such a huge burden.

José is the hero of La Soledad , a tragic, gripping film, part documentary, partly fictionalised, and set last year in Venezuela. By zooming in on one working-class family (most of whom appear in the film as themselves), it brings alive the dry news stories about the country’s economic collapse, sudden poverty, the shortage of essential goods—and the despair of those caught in this trap. Without being didactic or overtly political, it portrays the devastating human consequences of political decisions.

La Soledad, a decaying mansion in Caracas, is reached along tree-lined avenues, among other historic homes behind high, graffiti-scrawled walls. When the owners abandoned it, they let their former housekeeper Rosina stay there, and her family moves in; José, a labourer, is her grandson.

The owners still help them out with food and other essentials occasionally. But even they have been hit by the country’s collapse. So rather than repairing the house, as originally planned, they decide it’s past saving, and the best thing to do is to demolish it and sell the land—leaving the ailing Rosina and her family destitute if José can’t find a solution.

Film Festival season is here and there are exciting times ahead for film enthusiasts and industry practitioners.
The trinidad + tobago film festival (ttff) recently unveiled its itinerary for a weeklong film festival that will not only showcase and recognise the best films and the best talent in the industry,The festivities will run from September 19 to 26 and will involve activities such as training and outreach across the country to promote the production of local movies.

The line-up for this season is quite impressive with the spotlight on local and regional films, workshops and discussions. Filmgoers can look forward to just about 120 feature-length, short and experimental narrative and documentary films from the Caribbean and its diaspora and contemporary world cinema will be screened including five feature films and more than 30 short and experimental films from Trinidad and Tobago.

In recognition of National Patriotism Month which is observed in this country from August 31 to September 24, the ttff has partnered with the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and the Arts to showcase a day of screenings of local short and feature films. The screenings will be held on Republic Day, September 24, at MovieTowne Port of Spain, San Fernando and Tobago.

Three films on pan are also in the line-up of short and feature films that will screen at this year’s Festival. These steelband documentaries are To Be an All Star, birdsong and the James O’Connor’s film To Be A Renegade, which captures the story of bp Renegades through an examination of the violent beginnings of pan, the era of change, and its present state as a positive influence in communities, with steelbands now travelling abroad as international ambassadors. The documentary features players, founding members and supporters. Funded by bpTT the documentary seeks to show what it really means to be a Renegade. Both birdsong and To Be An All Star will screen on September 24, as part of the ttff’s day-long celebration of local films at MovieTowne.

The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (ttff) will once again underline the importance of film as a vehicle for raising awareness about human rights issues and advancing inclusion and social justice, with the awarding of the Amnesty International Human Rights Film Prize.

Established in an effort to support the promotion of human rights in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean, the Amnesty International Human Rights Prize will be awarded to a Caribbean filmmaker whose film best highlights a human rights issue.

The winning film will be chosen by a three-person jury, which this year comprises Gregory Sloane-Seale, National Coordinator, Citizen Security Programme in the Ministry of National Security; Dr Gabrielle Hosein, Head of Department and lecturer, Institute for Gender and Development Studies, at The University of the West Indies, and Pamela Carmona, Regional Youth and Activism Coordinator at the, Amnesty International Americas Regional Office, in Mexico.

The lives of two great revolutionary thinkers and writers feature in this year’s Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival (ttff) as part of its programme of panorama films (world cinema), announced last week.
Among them is the much anticipated I Am Not Your Negro, by renowned Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, based on an unfinished manuscript by American civil rights activist and writer, James Baldwin. Also carded to screen at the Festival, which runs from 19-26 September, is Neruda – loosely based on a period in the life of Chilean poet and communist politician, Pablo Neruda.

In Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, the words of writer James Baldwin (read by Samuel L Jackson), link the lives of three American civil rights activists — Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, in a disturbingly topical indictment of racism and hatred in America.

The film takes as its starting point Baldwin’s manuscript, Remember This House, a moving, poetic and at times humorous memoir, that puts the spotlight on America’s history of irrational fear and denial of race inequality. Baldwin, who died in 1987, and whose disillusionment with the US led him to emigrate to Europe, saw America as steadfastly narrow-minded, with racism as the source of its emotional and moral poverty.
Neruda covers the roughly 13 months that the poet spent in hiding from political persecution, before escaping to Argentina. Pablo Neruda was a communist party politician in 1948, when then President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla betrayed his leftist roots and aligned himself with the US’s war on communism. In an instant Neruda lost his high-powered allies and was forced into hiding.

Green Days by the River, a film adaptation of Michael Anthony’s classic 1967 novel of the same name, will open this year’s trinidad + tobago film festival (ttff), with a red carpet gala and screening to be held at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Port of Spain on September 19.

The first local film by a homegrown director and producer to open the festival, director of the movie, filmmaker Michael Mooleedhar’s film is set in the idyllic countryside of 1950s Mayaro and re-tells the story of 15-year-old Shell. Newly arrived in the village, he quickly gets caught between his longing to be a man, and his child-like innocence in the face of adult cunning.

With adolescent hormones raging, amidst the beauty of the local girls and the Mayaro landscape, the quiet storm that’s brewing may prove more than Shell can handle and life as he once knew it may never be the same again.

The award-winning film Ninth Floor, a documentary produced by TT-born, Canada-based Selwyn Jacob, will make its cinematic return to Trinidad this month at The University of the West Indies (The UWI), St Augustine.

The free ­screening is presented by the ­trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) in partnership with the Department of Cultural Studies, The UWI.

Described as addressing “the most dramatic and violent racial conflict in modern Canadian history” by povmagazine.com, Ninth Floor examines the Sir George Williams University riot of February 1969, when six Caribbean students mounted a protest against institutional racism.

God Loves the Fighter, by T&T filmmaker Damian Marcano, screened to a packed audience Tuesday night, during the WeBeat Festival, at the St James Amphitheatre. The free screening was organised by the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) and sponsored by Flow. Among those in attendance were lead actors Abdi Waithe (the gangsta, Stone) and Muhammad Muwakil (the protagonist, Charlie), and supporting actress Tishanna Williams.