new media is online + in person!

The ttff/21 New Media programme comprises avant garde and experimental film and video works from artists and filmmakers in the Caribbean and its diaspora. New Media works are available to view online, free of charge, on a scheduled basis (click the individual titles below for screening dates) from 24-28 September.

We’re also planning two nights of outdoor projections, on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 September. Take a drive or wander by Granderson Lab on Erthig Road in Belmont, to view the projections in real life. Live projections will run for approximately 90 minutes from 6-8.30pm, both nights. Please make sure to follow all government Covid guidelines. Make sure to wear your mask and to social distance.

new media film listing

New Media Panel

Wed 22 September, ​​3.00–4.30 p.m. (est)
location: Facebook Live, YouTube Live, ttfilmfestival.com
tickets: free
moderator: Melanie Archer
panellists: Lisa-Marie Harris, Ada M. Patterson, Alicia Diaz, Keoni K. Wright, Laura Iancu, Richard Mark Rawlins

A discussion with creatives selected for trinidad+tobago film festival 2021.

in competition: new media works + student films


We are pleased to announce the new media works and student films in competition at ttff/21. 
Films in juried competitions are rigorously discussed and dissected before being selected by the programming team, and must be unanimously agreed by the five programmers. In the case of the new media works, the programme curator shortlists the pieces in competition.

BEST NEW MEDIA WORK

production still: Musgo (Moss)

BEST STUDENT FILM

  • The Interview, directed by Ayana Harper
  • Juana, directed by José Antonio Martínez
  • Musgo (Moss), directed by Alexandra Guimarães + Gonçalo L. Almeida

new media is back!

A fixture of the annual trinidad+tobago film festival since 2011, we’re delighted to announce the return of new media to Medulla Art Gallery on Fitt Street in Woodbrook. The new media section of ttff comprises avant garde and experimental film and video works from artists and filmmakers in the Caribbean and diaspora.

Curated by Melanie Archer, works in our new media section can be viewed at Medulla Art Gallery weekdays (through 15 September) from 10am to 6pm, and Saturday from 11am to 2pm. All health and social distancing protocols will be in effect, with only five attendees at a time being allowed into the exhibition space. We ask that all attendees wear face masks, according to Government regulations.

works listing

group 1

Looking for “Looking for Langston”, by Ada M. Patterson
Hijo del mar (Son of the Sea), Candido Junior Bienvenido Cast
Displaced, Alex Mendez Giner

group 2

I am Sugar, by Richard Mark RawlinsIsland State of Mine, by Richard Mark Rawlins
How to break a horizon: a memory as retold by the sum of its residue, by Kearra Amaya Gopee
I cried so much I felt the universe pass through my eyes, by Luis Vasquez La Roche
Shade, by Analise Cleopatra
Alternative Facts, by Marina Santana de la Torre
El dúo de las hermanas gato (The Cat Sister’s Duet), by Marina Santana de la Torre

group 3

Goodbye to the Things, by Ian Schuler
The Whole World is Turning, by Ada M. Patterson

group 4

Wake Up, by Shinelle Ambris
Untitled, by Kelley-Ann Lindo
Howler Monkey Sex Noises at Lunchtime, by Rachel Lee
Silent Truths, by Rhiana Bonterre

group 5

Centella (Firefly), by Claudia Claremi
Palindrome, by David Parris 
Murciélago (Bat), by Claudia Claremi


In Competition: New Media Works

The new media section comprises avant garde and experimental film and video works from artists and filmmakers in the Caribbean and diaspora. These are the works in competition for best new media work at ttff/20:

Centella (Firefly), by Claudia Claremi
Looking for ‘Looking for Langston’, by Ada M. Patterson
Murciélago (Bat), by Claudia Claremi
The Whole World is Turning, by Ada M. Patterson

synopses

Centella (Firefly)
by Claudia Claremi/ 2019/Cuba/ 17 minutes

In Cuba the flight of fireflies, in the night, is said to be like a meeting of miniature spectres, weakened fires or wandering souls. Isabel invokes them and triggers the dance.

Looking for ‘Looking for Langston’
by Ada M. Patterson/ 2018/Barbados, Netherlands/ 16 minutes

A performative video work in search of Isaac Julien’s “Looking for Langston” (1989). A captain dreams of setting sail, in search of a mysterious, intangible, comforting vision that rests at the edge of the horizon. An exploration of desire and distance, pleasure and disappointment, secrets and surprise, “Looking for ‘Looking for Langston’” is a cruise of poetic correspondence, queering sailors and transgressing horizons.

Murciélago (Bat)
by Claudia Claremi/ 2018/ Cuba/ 12 minutes

A sensory essay told through body and sound. A composition made from the trance and the vibration of macroscopic figures seen at a millimetric distance from the skin of eight people in Cuba. Inside a black hole, rapid movements fill the void. Macroscopic corporal landscapes follow one after the other to percussion in crescendo. White skin pulsates serenely and black skin wiggles, showing a face. Bright discharges explode in the air. In a slow, swaying trance, a shining eyelid reveals and then hides a liquid eye. The swelling and contracting skin of an abdomen makes deep sounds to an unrelenting beat.

The Whole World is Turning
by Ada M. Patterson/ 2019/ Netherlands/ 21 minutes

A group of lovers is visited by a familiar guest. They remark on how this guest has turned, how they have turned and how the whole world keeps turning. How will they receive this turn of events?

Image: still from ‘Murciélago‘ by Claudia Claremi

Call For Submissions For TTFF/17 New Media Showcase

The Trinidad+Tobago film festival (TTFF/17)  is inviting  experimental filmmakers, visual/video artists and creative producers from the Caribbean and its diaspora to submit works to be featured in the 2017 edition of the Festival, in September. This year’s New Media programme will showcase works that speak to the theme “Bearings” and will award a prize of $5,000TT to the presentation that best captures this notion. The winner will be selected by a three member jury of an internationally acclaimed artist, curator and  art critic.

artists use their bodies as a battleground in ‘food for weapons’

by Aurora Herrera, ttff blogger

Food for Weapons was the featured work at the trinidad + tobago film festival New Media launch this year. It opened on Wednesday September 21. The body of work featured pieces by seven contemporary Venezuelan artists which revealed how they receive, reflect and comment on the connections between violence, power, food and the body.

It has taken me a few days to write this blog because I really wanted time to think about the work and to digest all of the discourses I was exposed at the launch.

I have very close ties with Venezuela, spending my time between there and Trinidad from my teenage years into my early twenties. My family keeps up-to-date on what is happening there, more so because we have loved ones there who are enduring the current situation.

About a month ago, my mother told me about a pastor that she knows, who goes across to Venezuela from Trinidad to take food items for the people. In one of the families he helps, there is a new mother who is too malnourished to produce breast milk so the baby was starving. He scheduled a trip to bring milk and other items to the family. When he arrived, he was told the baby died just the night before.

I have been told that even people in the privileged areas are going hungry. The control of food, medicines, water and the media is used to prevent uprisings and maintain power.

I also listened to conversations amongst my peers about the people that are being advised to leave certain areas on the Trinidadian North Coast because that is where the Venezuelan boats are coming in to exchange weapons for food and the environment is getting increasingly hostile.

The people I heard this from told me not to talk about it too much because it wasn’t safe to repeat.

I connected with Sandra Vivas, the curator of Food for Weapons as she had a similar experience.

“Food for weapons, it’s a rumour, it’s a rumour that everybody here knows but nobody talks about and I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want to put the people out there who gave me the idea,” she said. “It is the link with Trinidad and it is the danger we are now facing here especially as I now have this adopted land.”

Vivas is of Dominican and Venezuelan parentage and currently resides in Dominica. Food for Weapons is her first curatorial effort.

“I work with performance and I recently started doing films,” she said. “I feel extremely humbled and honoured to be doing this. I have a great respect for the ttff. I feel honoured to be doing this for Venezuela, to have a voice for Venezuelan artists and to be able to show what is being said.”

Vivas who knows all of the artists personally and I know them personally shared that one of the artists had to leave Venezuela because she was persecuted for her work.

The work of this artist, Deborah Castillo is titled “Marx Palimpsesto”.

“A palimpsesto is a manuscript that has been erased and written over,” Vivas explained. “In her case she is deleting fragments of Marx’s words. She doesn’t write but her writing is in her gesture. She is writing with her body. She made a sculpture of the face of Karl Marx and that is the eraser.”

One of the audience members commented, “To have a group of artists that are not activists or politicians…just artists that have decided to make a statement to emphasize what is reality using just their creativity is amazing.”

“In the current regime, anything that you document becomes extremely polticial,” she said. “So, more than before it is important to record it…the government does not want to the world to see what is happening [in Venezuela].”

Vivas spoke of a recent summit in Margarita where commercial flights were halted and no international press was allowed. It is said that there were platoons on the island staying in camps that apparently “did not even have toilets and the smell of the island was disgusting.”

The piece by Max Provenzano titled “Epistolary” features a man engaging in oral sex with a gun. The work is a comment on the violence in Venezuela and the relationship between submission and power.

“There is this power that this person who is holding the gun has,” Vivas said. “They feel that they can do anything. They are raping you. They are not doing it in an overt way but it is something you are constantly thinking about.”

Vivas included material that was intentionally shocking in the body of work. The piece by performance artist Erika Ordosgoitti is a film of her urinating directly into the camera, which is facing upwards.

“I chose that work because it talks about how women’s bodies are supposed to be.,” Vivas said. “Right now it seems extremely rare if not non-existent to have non shaved pubic hair. Pubic hair has become taboo.”

Vivas went on to comment that the work is about her ability to choose how she will present herself.

“We are bombarded to be a certain way,” Vivas explained. “So she is choosing a different perspective intentionally. She is standing to pee in front of the camera when it is usually men who stand to pee. It’s a power thing.”

In a previous interview Vivas commented that Food for Weapons also refers to the fact that ideas can be seen as food.

“It is a reminder that hunger can be both a dangerous oppressor and the most dramatic motivator for ultimate liberation,” she said. “The artists use their body as an instrument, recognizing it as a battleground where violence is often enacted through hunger, torture or menace, and seek to recreate it as a channel of liberation that is democratic and universal.”

ttff/16 New Media showcases Food For Weapons and Light

The work of seven contemporary Venezuelan artists examining power and violence and their relationship to the body – will open the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) New Media showcase, on Wednesday 21 September, from 7.00pm at the Big Black Box in Woodbrook.

Curated by Venezuelan experimental filmmaker, Sandra Vivas, ‘Food For Weapons’ questions the manipulation of power in Venezuela and the methods used to prevent protest and uprisings – control of food, medicines, water and the media.

“The title Food For Weapons, refers not only to the food shortages and violence in Venezuela, but also to the fact that ideas can be seen as food. A reminder that hunger can be both a dangerous oppressor and the most dramatic motivator for ultimate liberation. Ideas can be both food for thought and weapons of change,” says Vivas.

The exhibited work undermines established discourse through intimate narratives that are either taboo or simply ignored. According to Vivas, several of the artists have been politically persecuted for their work – some of which is deliberately shocking and only suitable for a mature audience. The artists use their body as an instrument, recognizing it as a battleground where violence is often enacted through hunger, torture or menace, and seek to recreate it as a channel of liberation that is democratic and universal.

Food for Weapons will be followed by a second New Media installation ‘Light’ by North Eleven, on Saturday 24 September, at 9pm, also at Big Black Box.

North Eleven projection artists are especially interested in the interaction between visuals and how the audience interact with them. Working with multiple technologies and interfaces ‘Light’ is a live audio-visual performance that incorporates projection mapping & murals, live digital graffiti & motion design, and live visuals. From lo-tech mediums such as string, paper, wire mesh and cardboard, to the latest audio-visual applications, and collaborations with Stanton Kewley and fellow artists, illustrators, painters and musicians, North Eleven will transform the Big Black Box into a stunning canvass of mixed media artwork.

North Eleven has been the ttff’s official technical partner since 2010, working extensively with the community development programme to bring free community cinema to numerous communities throughout Trinidad and Tobago. For the past three years, they have generously provided technical sponsorship for the festival’s New Media programme.

Big Black Box, located on 33 Murray Street, Woodbrook and managed by 3Canal, has evolved into ttff’s official venue partner for New Media this year; and will also be a ‘watering hole’ during the festival period, offering film fans a creative community space to relax after attending films and industry activities.

The trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) celebrates films from and about the Caribbean and its diaspora, as well as from world cinema, through an annual festival and year-round screenings. In addition, the ttff seeks to facilitate the growth of Caribbean cinema by offering a wide-ranging industry programme and networking opportunities. The ttff is presented by Flow, given leading sponsorship by Trinidad and Tobago Film Company Ltd (FilmTT), and supporting sponsorship by RBC Royal Bank, The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago, Embassy of the United States of America and the Tourism Development Company.

Still from 'Oblivion' by Anna Rosa Rodriguez.

Still from ‘Oblivion’ by Anna Rosa Rodriguez.

Still from 'Selective Migration' by Luis Poleo.

Still from ‘Selective Migration’ by Luis Poleo.