Seven young people will enjoy the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) 2017 experience as jurors for the RBC Royal Bank Youth Jury Award.
The jurors were selected following an open call for submissions earlier this year. They will view six films in competition during ttff/17 and the award for first place will be presented at the ttff’s prize-giving ceremony on Tuesday 26 September 2017, at the Central Bank Auditorium, Port of Spain.
The trinidad+tobago film festival is partnering with UN Women and the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), UWI to present The Power of Women in Film, on Friday 22 September, from 9am, at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad.
The day of panels and presentations will include speakers from across the region who explore depictions of women and girls and how film can be used to address issues of violence against women, objectification, gender inequality and female empowerment. Short films will be incorporated into the programme to help illustrate some of the issues being discussed. The Power of Women in Film initiative is free, and individuals and organisations interested in the issues are invited to attend.
The Power of Women in Film will be followed by three days of feminist cinema, from 22 – 24 September, also at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad.
As part of its commitment to use film to develop transferable skills among young people, the trinidad+tobago film festival has teamed up with RBC Royal Bank for the RBC Future Critics Initiative to prepare journalism students for the rigour, best practices and industry standards of critical film analysis and festival reporting.
For the second consecutive year, ten students from the Ken Gordon School of Journalism at the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts (COSTAATT) will be selected to attend special Festival events for professional journalists, as well as public screenings, in order to write critical reviews of films under the mentorship of film critic and journalist, BC Pires. The students will be expected to write daily reviews for the Festival’s website and post social media reports.
At the conclusion of the Festival, the best Future Critic will be selected on the basis of the quality of their writing and analysis, their ability to meet tight deadlines, and the number of reviews published. They will be awarded a cash prize of $TT5,000, by RBC Royal Bank, at the ttff’s award ceremony on 26 September.
According to Darryl White – Managing Director – RBC Royal Bank (Trinidad & Tobago) Ltd: “RBC has a long history of supporting initiatives that help young people realize their potential as leaders and contribute to the socio-economic and cultural fabric of society. We see the RBC Future Critics programme as an extension of this work, building capacity and a culture of excellence in young people.”
The lives of two great revolutionary thinkers and writers feature in this year’s trinidad+tobago film festival as part of its programme of panorama films (world cinema), announced today.
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.