Presented with the support of the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC), this year’s retrospective seeks to honour and celebrate the work of vanguard director and photographer, Horace Ové, with online screenings of some of his most recognised and important films: “Baldwin’s Nigger”, “King Carnival”, “Pressure”, “Playing Away”, “The Ghost of Hing King Estate” and “Black Safari” (which he didn’t direct but in which he had a starring on-screen role).

With an impressive, groundbreaking body of work, Horace Ové is the most important filmmaker from Trinidad and Tobago and one of the Caribbean’s masters. Ové was born in Belmont, a cosmopolitan suburb of Port of Spain, where he proudly proclaimed, “every colour, class, creed and race lived side by side”. His early love of film was nurtured by frequenting the local Olympic cinema where he and his friends used to sit in the cheapest pit seats, providing commentary and interacting with the Hollywood stars on the screen, often having seen the films a number of times. The films used to break down and the members of pit made sure to roundly heckle the projectionist. 

Belmont was a centre for Carnival, and other cultural activities, and Horace’s family was right in the middle of it. In fact, Ové’s brother, Valmond, played Nero in the Carnival band, “Imperial Rome”. Ové carried this rich culture with him when, in 1960, as did many other West Indians, he left Trinidad to live in England, the “mother country”. He went to study painting, photography and interior design but soon became involved with film. He was an extra on the Hollywood epic, “Cleopatra” (1963), but the film ran into major problems forcing it to move location from London to Rome. Ové travelled to Italy where he now played a soldier rather than a slave. When the film wrapped production, Ové stayed on in Italy, where he was especially influenced by Fellini, but also by De Sica, Rossellini and other members of the Italian Neorealist movement.

Returning to England, Ové went on to study film at the London School of Film Technique. He made his first film, “The Art of the Needle” (1969), a short documentary about acupuncture in Britain that was sponsored by the Acupuncture Association. This proved to be the beginning of a long and eclectic career in film and television, mainly in Britain, but also in many other countries, including the Caribbean. That same year he directed “Baldwin’s Nigger”, featuring an exchange between the American activist Dick Gregory, the celebrated African American writer James Baldwin, and a mainly black audience. They discussed and compared the experiences of black people in America and Britain during the Civil Rights Movement and the turbulent 1960s. In 1970, he directed another pioneering film, “Reggae”, an exploration of the beginnings of the reggae movement. This was the first film on the subject directed by a black person from the Caribbean. The centrepiece of the film is a concert at Wembley stadium featuring Toots and the Maytals, Desmong Dekker and others, while the film also questioned the paradoxical involvement of white skinheads with reggae music.  

“The Black Safari” (1972) saw Ové in a different role, that of presenter, in this parody of an African safari where Ové, and his black colleagues, go on an expedition in a canal boat looking for the “real” England. The locals looked on in amazement. “Playing Away” (1986), directed by Ové, explored similar themes in an amusing look at culture shock as a West Indian cricket team from Brixton is invited to play a cricket match against a white village team, to mark the conclusion of “Third World Week”.

With “King Carnival” (1973), Ové returned to his roots, to film in Trinidad during Carnival celebrations. The film explores the role of Carnival in the society, and the influence of African cultural traditions. It is by far the best of the number of films made on the subject. However, his tour de force was “Pressure” (1976). With a screenplay by famed Trinidadian writer, Samuel Selvon, “Pressure” was Ové’s first narrative feature film, and has the distinction of being the first independent feature film made in Britain by a Black director. The film was controversial as it explored the racism and xenophobia faced by West Indian immigrants and their children (now first and second generation British) in England – it was shelved for nearly three years by its funders, the British Film Institute (BFI). The timing and focus of the film were prescient: within a few years of its release, the streets of Brixton, Birmingham and Bristol exploded into riots, as angry and disenfranchised members of the Black British community took to the streets in protest against police harassment and the contentions ‘sus’ laws related to stop and search.

Other films shot in the Caribbean included a mini series for television, “The Orchid House” (1991) produced by Ové and Annabelle Alcazar. Based on a novel of the same name by Phyllis Shand Allfrey, it was shot on location in Dominica and featured a white plantation family witnessing the decline of the British colonial order and the beginnings of the independence movement. Back home in Trinidad, Ové directed his last dramatic feature film “The Ghost of Hing King Estate” (2009), produced by Francis Escayg, and starring Wendell Manwarren and Teri-Leigh Bovell. The film was based on a true story about the mysterious deaths on a local cocoa estate. It had limited exposure, but was enthusiastically received at a screening at the British Film Institute. 

Horace Ové was awarded the Hummingbird Medal by the government of Trinidad and Tobago in 1992, and was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE) by the British government in 2007. These tributes represent over fifty years of creative film and television production, while his photographs have been displayed at the National Portrait Gallery and form part of the Arts Council’s permanent collection.  

“I am a filmmaker and a black filmmaker, but that doesn’t mean I am only going to make black films. I’ve tried not to do that in my career as that limits me as an artist. I’ve always wanted to film about anything, anywhere, and anybody”.

Horace Ové

Ové continued, “I’ve always wanted to produce quality films [and] I made up my mind that I’m going to make films as good as anybody else in any country – England, France or wherever.” 

And this is what he has done.

~ Dr Bruce Paddington

*Please note, retrospective films are made available to viewers in the Caribbean only. Please check our schedule for show dates.

Fri 24 Sept, ​​3.00–4.00 p.m. (est)
location: Facebook Live, YouTube Live, ttfilmfestival.com
tickets: free
moderators: Marsha Pearce + Atillah Springer

Click here to register.

Visual artist, filmmaker and curator, Zak Ové has built a career around a visual iconography that is both recognisably Caribbean and seems at home in a variety of international spaces. Elder son of filmmaker Horace Ové, Zak is also actively involved in documenting and preserving his father’s legacy. In this ttff talk, art writer and educator, Marsha Pearce, and cultural activist, Atillah Springer will delve into Ové’s creative practice as well as his role in preserving his father’s substantial legacy.

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Zak Ové is a British/Caribbean artist with a multidisciplinary practice across sculpture, film and photography. His work is informed, in part, by the history and lore carried through the African diaspora to the Caribbean, Britain and beyond, with particular focus on traditions of masking and masquerade as tools of self emancipation. Ové’s solo presentation “The Invisible Man and The Masque of Blackness” – 40  sculptures exhibited alongside works by Rodin – was on view in the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA from (2019). Ové has presented solo sculpture installations in the Great Hall at the British  Museum, London, UK; San Francisco Civic Centre, San Francisco, CA; Forecourt  of Somerset House, London; The Ford Foundation, NY; The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and The Slavery Museum, Liverpool among others. Ové’s work features in a number of museum collections, as well as in private foundations, including the British Museum, London; Newark Museum, New Jersey; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida and many others. He curated the seminal and widely-acclaimed exhibition, “Get up, Stand up now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers” at Somerset House, London in 2019. 

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Horace Ové is internationally known as one of the leading black independent filmmakers to emerge in Britain since the post-war period. His feature film, “Pressure”, was the first Black feature film to be made in the UK; his 1970 documentary, “Reggae”, the first in-depth documentary on Black music and reggae. His film career has produced such diverse films as “Playing Away”, “A Hole in Babylon” and “Baldwin’s Nigger” (with James Baldwin and Dick Gregory) among others. Alongside his film career, Ové has worked extensively as a photographer all over the world, beginning in his native Trinidad during the 1960s and 1970s covering social and political events in the UK, as well as chronicling the birth and growth of the Notting Hill Carnival. He has had several exhibitions at The Photographer’s Gallery, London; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Castle Museum, Nottingham; The University of Brighton; Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales and at Arts Depot, London. Twelve of his portraits were purchased as part of the permanent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and were exhibited. At the Whitechapel Gallery, Ové’s pictures of Michael X and members of the Black Power Movement featured as part of “The Back to Black” exhibition. The Barbican also featured a retrospective of Ové’s films and photographs. 

Following a successful 2013 film festival, the ttff will resume its community film outreach programme, from October 18 to 26. Sponsored by the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC), the Community Cinema Series will give audiences in San Fernando, Couva, La Brea and Tobago the opportunity to experience the mobile cinema experience in their communities, free of charge.

The ttff Community Cinema Series will feature ten films, exploring a diversity of themes and styles. The majority of these films are shorts, while two award-winning features—Pressure by Horace Ové and Rain by Maria Govan—will also be screened.

The Community Cinema Series rolls out on October 18 at the San Fernando Hill Recreation Grounds with Rain, a critically acclaimed family drama from the Bahamas about a promising young sprinter who seeks family roots after a devastating loss. Rain will be preceded by The Fallen People of The Black Land, an animated short film directed by T&T filmmaker Joanne Haynes.

On Saturday 19 October, the Community Cinema Series proceeds to the NGC Couva Joylanders Pan Theatre, where the classic T&T feature The Panman, directed by Kamalo Deen, will be screened. The saga of a young man from an affluent family turning down a scholarship to play pan, The Panman will be preceded by Jab In The Dark, winner of the ttff/13 People’s Choice Award for Best Short Film. The film’s director, Robert Macfarlane, will be present to introduce and discuss his film.

Then on Wednesday 23 October, primary school students and members of the Growing Leaders Foundation Programme will be treated to a series of short films at MovieTowne, Tobago.

The Community Cinema Series concludes on Saturday 26 October at the La Brea Community Centre. Held in association with the La Brea Village Council, this event will feature a screening of Pressure, by acclaimed T&T director Horace Ové. The film traces the journey of a British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad who finds himself adrift between two cultures. Producer of the film and Programme Director of the ttff, Annabelle Alcazar, will be present for a Q&A session.

“Community Cinema is an integral part of our vision and objectives at the ttff,” said Melvina Hazard, Director of Community Development, ttff. “By taking films and filmmakers directly to communities, we promote the production and appreciation of local and Caribbean films, as well as educate, entertain and inspire audiences, while using film as a platform for social transformation.”

NGC has been a Supporting Sponsor of the ttff since 2009. In 2011, the company began sponsoring community screenings throughout Trinidad and Tobago. Speaking about the 2013 Community Cinema Series, Wynda Chandler, Head of Community Relations at NGC, noted, “When we considered the power of film to reinforce the identity of a people by giving visual expression to ideas, NGC took the leap to contribute to mining a new area of national and international talent.

“With the introduction in 2011 of community screenings, NGC was happy to get the involvement of residents of satellite districts who, owing to their distance from MovieTowne—the hub of the Festival—may have found difficulty in attending screenings. NGC is also happy to involve its employee volunteers who serve as hosts in the various communities.”

Admission to the ttff Community Cinema Series is free. All screenings but the Tobago screening will start at 7pm and refreshments will be on sale. North Eleven, the ttff’s Official Screen Partner, will facilitate the technical aspects of the series.

Image: A shot from Pressure (1976)

Due to the rain over the past few days, our outdoor bpTT Community Cinergy screenings on 27 and 28 April had to be postponed. Those screenings will now take place this weekend instead, at the originally advertised venues and times. Admission is free.

Saturday 4 May, 6pm
University of the West Indies, St Augustine
Buck: The Man Spirit, T&T/35mins
Director: Steven Taylor
Captains of the Sand, Brazil/96mins
Director: Cecilia Amado

Sunday 5 May, 6pm
Adam Smith Square, Port-of-Spain
Playing Away UK, TT/100mins
Director: Horace Ové

Food and drink will be on sale at UWI, but not at Adam Smith Square.

Image: A still from Captains of the Sand

The trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) is set to kick off its most ambitious community cinema initiative to date, the second annual Community Cinergy series, with ttff leading sponsor bpTT. The series, which will consist of six free events combining film screenings and live entertainment in open-air settings, begins on 26 April and runs until 9 June.

First up is a screening at the Trinidad and Tobago Sailing Association in Chaguaramas on Friday 26 April, of the film Wind Jammers, a ttff/11 selection. Directed by Kareem Mortimer of the Bahamas, this inspiring story tells of a teenage girl who comes of age through sailing.

On Saturday 27 April the series moves to UWI, St. Augustine, where the supernatural thriller Buck: The Man Spirit, directed by T&T’s Steven Taylor, will be shown, along with the Brazilian feature Captains of the Sand. A ttff/12 film, Buck won the People’s Choice Award for Best Short Film. Captains of the Sand—the story of a gang of street urchins in 1950s Bahia—also screened at the ttff in 2012.

Then on Sunday 28 April, award-winning T&T-British director Horace Ové’s classic cricket film, Playing Away, which screened at the ttff in 2008, will be shown at Adam Smith Square in Woodbrook.

A poignant and tender Indian love story, Valley of Saints, follows next, at San Fernando Hill on Saturday 11 May. Written and directed by Musa Syeed, this ttff/12 selection and winner of the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival is set on the beautiful Dal Lake in Kashmir.

The series concludes with a weekend of family-oriented activities and films at the Buccoo Integrated Complex in Tobago on Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 June. On Saturday there will be a programme of short films, while on Sunday the Cuban feature and ttff/12 selection Habanastation—the touching story of the friendship between two boys from different social classes—will be screened. This event takes place in association with the Healing with Horses Foundation and the Growing Leaders Foundation.

All events begin at 6pm except in Tobago where the start time is 5pm on both days. Admission to all the film screenings is free and food and drink will be on sale at all venues except Adam Smith Square, where audiences are invited to bring their own refreshments.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SCREENINGS ON APRIL 27 AND 28 HAVE BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER.

Image: A shot from Valley of Saints