A package of short Caribbean films—all previous selections of the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff)—will screen at the Edinburgh Short Film Festival (ESFF) on Saturday 14 November.

The screenings of these short films form part of an exchange between ttff and ESFF. A package of short films from ESFF screened at ttff/15 in September.

“We are particularly pleased to partner with ttff as, like Scotland, T&T has a unique and distinctive culture of its own as well as profound love of film,” said Paul Bruce, Festival Director, ESFF.

Founded in 2011, ESFF evolved from the Leith Short Film Festival which was a community event that formed part of the Leith Festival. ESFF is now the largest dedicated short film festival in Scotland.

The ttff, founded in 2006, celebrates films from and about the Caribbean and its diaspora, as well as from world cinema, through an annual festival and year-round screenings.

The seven ttff selections that will screen at ESFF are:

10 Ave Maria, Ryan Oduber and Juan Francisco Pardo, Aruba (2011)
ABCs, Diana Montero, Cuba (2013)
Doubles with Slight Pepper, Ian Harnarine, Trinidad and Tobago (2012)
Grave Digger, Gabrielle Blackwood, Jamaica (2012)
A Home for These Old Bones, Julien Silloray, Guadeloupe (2013)
Old Moon, Raisa Bonnet, Puerto Rico (2013)
Passage, Kareem Mortimer, Bahamas (2013)

In addition to all the films having screened at past editions of the ttff, 10 Ave Maria, ABCs, Old Moon and Passage all won jury prizes at the Festival.

Editorial Director of the ttff, Jonathan Ali—who will be present at ESFF to introduce the film package—said, “The Scottish presence and influence in T&T and the Caribbean goes back over 200 years. So we look forward to presenting films from the region to a Scottish audience, just as we were thrilled to present shorts from Scotland and elsewhere at ttff/15.”

Image: A still from Old Moon

Five young people got the chance of lifetime when they sat on the bpTT youth jury at the 2015 trinidad + tobago film festival (ttff/15), which ran from September 15–29.

The initiative was conceived in 2014, as a way of stimulating interest in and a critical appreciation for independent film among Trinidad and Tobago’s youth.

Saskia Johnson, Claude Lilford, Auset McClean, Sarah Mongroo and Teneka Mohammed were the five jurors selected for this year’s jury. They were chosen by an open call. To be considered for the jury, applicants had to be from 16 to 21 years of age. Each had to submit an essay saying what their favourite film is, and why.

Under the guidance of film critic and journalist BC Pires, the jury watched eight feature-length fiction films featuring young protagonists.

The films in competition were:

Girlhood: Céline Sciamma, 2014 / France
The Greatest House in the World: Ana V. Bojórquez, Lucía Carreras, 2015 / Guatemala, Mexico
Güeros: Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2014 / Mexico
Honeytrap: Rebecca Johnson, 2014 / United Kingdom
Margarita, with a Straw: Shonali Bose, 2014 / India
On the Road, Somewhere: Guillermo Zouain, 2015 / Dominican Republic
Stories of Our Lives: Jim Chuchu, 2015 / Kenya, South Africa
Theeb: Naji Abu Nowar, 2014 / Jordan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom

Girlhood—the story of Mariemme, a black girl living in the suburbs of Paris who leaves her abusive home life and joins a gang—was the jury’s choice for best film. As the director of the winning film, Céline Sciamma will receive a cash award of $5000 from bpTT.

The jury also gave an honourable mention to Güeros, and a special mention to The Greatest House in the World for its cinematography.

After the ttff/15 awards ceremony on September 27, the members of the jury opened up about their experience.

“I’ve been a film enthusiast for about three years,” 19-year-old Claude Lilford said. “It’s been a unique chance, not something I would get the chance to do anywhere else—maybe a few other places in the world—but this is a unique experience and something I really wanted to be a part of.”

Lilford’s colleague, 20-year-old Teneka Mohammed, who is a Film Studies major at the University of the West Indies, commented on the scope of the experience.

“I watch film[s] in school but [this] was a bigger experience and I loved it! I want to be a film critic so of course I’m so happy this is going on my résumé.”

BC Pires—who has been writing about films since 1988 and who also sat on the first jury at the ttff—commended the jury members on their diplomacy.

“There are not enough superlatives to describe what a pleasure it is to be working with these young people,” he said. “They rose to their task amazingly well. If our Parliament could see how they spoke to one another. They were passionate and went to their task of listening to one another with, I think, a real honesty, humility and respect for the other person’s point of view. I think they might all consider a career in dispute resolution.”

Pires also gave a little insight into how he sought to guide the jury.

“We had meetings before the adjudication, and I did suggest to them an approach I thought they should take: to try to award the best film, not the film they liked most, although in the adjudication process, I did suggest to them that now is the time to bring back in passion.”

“They have no idea how much I really wanted to be a part of [the youth jury],” 18-year-old Sarah Mungroo said. “ I think I am in that limbo period between being an adult and a child and the youth jury really helped me figure out what I want to do with my life. After we finished deliberating I was thinking that I could do this for the rest of my life. I was so happy. Thank you bpTT and ttff for the opportunity!”

Image: the members of the ttff/15 bpTT youth jury, from left, Claude Lilford, Teneka Mohammed, Sarah Mongroo, Saskia Johnson and Auset McClean

A package of five short Caribbean films—all previous selections of the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff)—will screen at île Courts, the International Short Film Festival of Mauritius (ISFFM), which takes place from 6–10 October.

The screenings of these short films form part of an exchange between the ttff and ISFFM. A package of short films from Mauritius screened at the recently concluded ttff/15.

The films that will screen at ISFFM are:

ABCs, Diana Montero, Cuba (2013)
Doubles with Slight Pepper, Ian Harnarine, Trinidad and Tobago (2012)
Grave Digger, Gabrielle Blackwood, Jamaica (2012)
A Home for These Old Bones, Julien Silloray, Guadeloupe (2013)
Old Moon, Raisa Bonnet, Puerto Rico (2013)

The package will screen on Friday 9 October. In addition, Doubles with Slight Pepper and A Home for These Old Bones will screen as part of the ISFFM’s closing night festivities on Saturday 10 October.

“Trinidad and Mauritius share remarkably similar histories, never mind that one island is in the Caribbean and the other is in the Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometres apart,” said ttff Programme Director Annabelle Alcazar.

“We are thrilled at this opportunity to share aspects of the Caribbean experience with the people of Mauritius, just as we were happy recently to present Mauritian life to our audiences. We expect this to be the start of a fruitful collaboration between our two festivals, and both countries.”

Founded in 2007, ISFFM is an annual showcase of short cinematic works from island nations of the Indian Ocean. Part of the festival’s stated mission is to develop an audience for a “different kind of cinema” in Mauritius.

Image: A still from A Home for These Old Bones

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The documentary Vanishing Sail, directed by Alexis Andrews, won the People’s Choice Award for Best Feature Documentary at the ttff/15. Our blogger, Aurora Herrera, attended the screening of the film on Saturday 26 September, where Andrews was present.

“Life is too short for instant coffee and Rice Krispies.” – John Smith

This is my favourite line from Vanishing Sail.

Vanishing Sail is a film about the traditions of boat-building in the Grenadines but by emphasising this part of John Smith’s interview, director Alexis Andrews is pushing the audience to dig deeper, to size up the routines of instant gratification in their own lives and to do the work needed to experience a deeper sagacity of life.

The film focuses on Alwyn Enoe, one of the last boat-builders of Carriacou, who practises the trade passed down the generations from the Scottish settlers who arrived in the 19th century. At one point, these traditions of boat-building were crucial to the survival of the islanders. However, with the younger generation now interested in other pursuits, these skills have all but vanished. Approaching his 70s, Alwyn decides to create a final sailing vessel before the skills introduced by his ancestors are lost forever.

Through mapping the creation of this vessel, Andrews gifts the audience the ability to witness the miracle of creation.

From the cutting of the trees that form the skeleton of the boat to the addition of reinforcing sinews of planking to fortifying joints of screws, nails and caulking to the fleshy materialisation of sandpapered and painted decks, a masterful mast and swift sails, Andrews connects the audience to the three-year journey to birth the Exodus.

“The film itself took three years, [the length of time it took] to build Alwyn’s vessel,” he said. “During that time I sailed up and down the Caribbean looking for stories, for people who had a connection with boat building and I thought it would be maybe ten people that I find with interesting stories and during the course of my travelling up and down, I did 49 interviews. We [had] 180 hours of footage. So then it took another two years to refine the story and a lot of people, when they heard the project was in development, began to get in touch with us and they wanted to submit photographs or pieces of music or old footage which was wonderful because it all helped to tell a wider story.”

The film features several voices that have all been a part of the salt-sea life, working on boats in varying capacities, as well as a cultural scholar and a storyteller from the Carriacou community who give life to the history of boat-building and sailing, recounting their memories with charisma and the emotion of genuine nostalgia.

Andrews was born in Greece and studied photography in London before moving to Antigua in 1985 to work as a commercial photographer in the yachting industry.

Combined with his natural eye for framing, creativity and composition, Andrews’ natural love for boat-building, sailing, as well as his respect for Alwyn, give the film a beautiful buoyancy. Andrews has lived in Antigua since 1895 and has been visiting Carriacou for over a decade, during which time he was able to build a boat with Alwyn, the Genesis.

I suspect that it is because of this true experience of the island, the people and the boats that Andrews’ portrayal of the life there feels authentic and intimate. Moreover, because he is invested in the story, he gets the audience to invest in the story. I felt like I was right there with Alwyn and his sons all the way through. I mean, they made a sail boat, from scratch, with their bare hands. That is completely beautiful and remarkable. I marveled at the latitude of work and felt utterly impatient to see the vessel in the water. On the launch day, as they were rolling the boat down to the shoreline, I realized I was holding my breath and only when it hit the water did I breathe a sigh of relief, happiness, pride and exultation.

One audience member commented on the cinematography saying, “It was beautifully shot and edited. The camber of the edit allowed for moments of stillness but also it had this racing element as well.”

They also inquired as to the size of the crew, kind of equipment and whether it was invasive in the community. Beautifully edited, it must have been very challenging to put that together.

“Basically I’m not a filmmaker,” Andrews responded. “I’ve never done this before but I know how to use a still camera. So the Canon 5D is what I shot the entire film on. It captures the composition very well, the colours are amazing and it’s completely unobtrusive. Often when you point that at someone, they think you’re just taking their portrait, so the dialogue would continue naturally.

“The other person who shot the film, Justin [Sihera], he is from Carriacou himself and the two of us kind of developed this way of moving through the village in a very natural way. It’s a huge honour to have been part of the life there and to tell the story because it was collaborative and Alwyn and his family not only gave of their time and their stories but they were hugely supportive all the way through and they trusted me.

“Alwyn is a man I have huge respect for because he represents a very important thing that we sometimes miss in this fast-paced world and that is if you love to do something and you have a culture behind you and you do it and keep doing it and love it, you build respect. I love that about him.”

There were also Carriacouans in the audience who commented on the film.

“I’d like to congratulate you as a Carriacouan for such a wonderful piece of work, a wonderful film and a great work of art,” one of them said. “You have preserved our history, our culture and our heritage in a form that’s just incredible. I’m very impressed. Well done and thank you very much.”

Another audience member informed Andrews that members of the Compton family, who are featured in the film, were in the audience.

“This film was very special because they got to see some of their family,” they said.

When asked about why traditional boat-building is struggling to survive, Andrews pointed out the changing priorities of the young people and the economy.

“Young people are not willing to put that kind of work in,” he said. “It’s a lot of hard work. It’s much harder to build a traditional vessel than it is to build a speedboat. You can build [a speedboat] in a month and he can do business with it really quickly. The only way that traditional boat-building could really survive in this culture any longer is two ways. One; build boats for people who appreciate it—people who like to race and identify with lost traditions. There are a few of us crazy people out there. Two, the main way it works is tourism, because a lot of people like to experience to real Caribbean. But the real Caribbean is not going around on a chartered catamaran on a rum cruise. That’s fun but it’s not very cultural when you put it next to feeling the soul of a wooden boat under your bare feet and when you go out there, and then you have the rum. Tourism is a lot of these boats taking charters and that’s how they survive.”

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The short fiction film Quedate, directed by US-Puerto Rican filmmaker Bradley Bixler, and the fiction feature Margarita, with a Straw, directed by Indian filmmaker Shonali Bose, screened at the ttff/15 on Friday 25 September. Our blogger, Aurora Herrera, attended the screenings, where Bixler and Bose were present.

Guillermo works for a human trafficking ring. One night he discovers two refugees, Alondra and her son, Victor, hiding in his truck. He reluctantly shelters them in his apartment, and begins to grow attached to them. Soon the secret makes its way out.

According to the director, Puerto-Rico born Bradley Bixler, the idea for Quedate came from a half-page story he read about a guy who shelters a woman who fled her fiancé on her wedding night.

“[That story] has nothing to do with trafficking but I guess that notion of flight [carried though],” Bixler said when asked about his motivation for this film.

Based in New York, the independent filmmaker is currently pursuing his MFA in Directing and Cinematography at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

“I lived in Guatemala for six months and while I was there I experienced many accounts of migrant workers,” he said. “This is a dramatised story.”

One audience member asked about the editing style.

“As far as the technical part of it, I guess if we’re talking about editing, it’s a matter of keeping a certain pace but I think there are overall certain things in [my] style,” he said. “It’s shot on 16mm film. It’s very hard to come by now, even in New York. There is a very organic feel to it, it’s very visceral and complements the acting style.”

The 23-minute film was shot in an apartment in Washington Heights in Manhattan over five days.

“We worked on giving it a more dilapidated, rustic feeling,” he said. “I think a lot of the feel was just the camera, the reflection and the movement. It’s jerky, it’s handheld, shots are also composed when the actors are moving so I guess it’s a combination.”

Melvina Hazard, ttff director of community development, who introduced the film and hosted the Q&A, said that she felt that the film was very moving.

“When you look at the idea of human trafficking there is something so horrendous and you think about all of these nameless, faceless people and you have put a human face to it in a very sweet and touching and emotive way,” she said.

I too felt that the film dealt really well with the issue of human trafficking, as it humanised both sides of the business. Bixler does a good job of exploring the stories of both the trafficked and the traffickers. One does not usually feel empathy for the traffickers so I really appreciated this change in perspective.

Bixler also spoke about the casting process, explaining that it was not as simple as one would think.

“I had a casting director do the casting,” he said. “There are over 50,000 actors in New York but there aren’t as many Latinos as one might think. The film involves Central Americans. We were looking for certain things like Central American Spanish and certain accent highlights. You want that for accuracy.”

****

This film is magic.

Margarita, with a Straw is a film about love, loss, learning, growth, pain, resolution and happiness. It is a gorgeous moving snapshot of precious life. It is about Laila, a bright young woman from Delhi with cerebral palsy. She comes from a very loving family. Laila falls in love with Nima, a fellow musician in her class. When this boy rejects her, a heartbroken Laila accepts a place at a university in New York with the support of her mother. There she meets Khanum, a blind Pakistani girl. Slowly their friendship blossoms into a tender romance, and Laila is made to reconsider everything she thought she knew about herself and her world.

Shonali Bose has a Masters in Political Science from Columbia University, and an MFA in Directing from the UCLA Film School. Her debut narrative feature film Amu (2005), opened at the Berlin International Film Festival and won numerous awards. Margarita, with a Straw, opened at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I truly feel that if I did not see this film and witness the charm, wit and love of Bose when she spoke at the Q&A, that my life would have been less, that I would have missed out on a luminous experience.

Bose’s real life inspiration behind the film brought me to tears.

“My first cousin has acute cerebral palsy and she is only a year younger than me so I grew up doing everything with her,” she said. “We did everything in the same way until the point we were teenagers and I was able to date and she wasn’t. I was very conscious of that and I actually didn’t date at that time because I felt that she would feel terrible now to be left out. So when I was 40 and she was 39 and we were in London at a pub and I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said, “I just want to have sex!” it just threw me. She pointed out that family members and caregivers ignore the sexuality of the disabled the most and don’t enable it.

“Then in the summer of 2010, I was having lunch with my son Ishan, and I told him for the last couple years I finally feel in my own skin, I’ve been doing this work on myself and instead of seeking external affirmation as a filmmaker, finally I feel internal affirmation, empowerment and acceptance. This movement of seeking external love and affirmation to total self-love and acceptance so that you can go on a date with yourself, gave me the working title of the film, I Have Me. I asked him if he knew what I meant and he looked deeply into my eyes and he said “Mama, I totally know what you mean because I feel I have me.” Three weeks after that conversation he died in a horrific accident. The journey of the last five years is really raising a margarita, a toast to life, life with all of its ups and downs and celebrating the darkness and pain as well as the good things.”

I was really surprised to find out that the actress who plays Lila, Kalki Koechlin, was not disabled. She was totally authentic. Bose, who has a very close working relationship with her actors, explained that at first she did try to find a disabled actor to play the part.

“I did first try to find somebody who had cerebral palsy, not to be politically correct but because I felt that no one else would give them a chance,” Bose said. “I did a nationwide hunt in India for actors who were blind and had cerebral palsy. I couldn’t find 19-year-olds who could do that so I turned to professional actors. Of course it was terrifying to find someone to pull if off authentically because if it wasn’t authentic I would not have made the film and the agreement with Kalki was that even if we go through this whole thing and we get to the set and we can’t pull it off, we are going to abandon it because I cannot not have it be authentic.”

In terms of the multilayered storyline, Bose faced many challenges to get the film to the screen.

“As soon as I made the character bisexual, we lost 50 per cent of our funding,” she said. “It’s illegal to be gay so it became a political issue. I said, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re not going to give me money because it’s dealing with a gay issue?’ Now I’m going to find the money because this is so wrong and I have to fight this now.”

Eventually Margarita, with a Straw opened on 250 screens in the country.

“So many young gay people wrote to me and said, ‘We took our families to see the film and then we came out to them.’”

Bose maintains though that the film is not about being gay, disabled, Islamic or inter-caste.

“Why should we always show the mainstream, the Punjabi North character?” she asked. “[The character of] Khanum is Muslim but she is not standing in for Muslims. It’s a not about Muslim identity. It was not a film about disability nor is the film about being gay—why not have a character that is gay but it’s not about the issue? I feel that you shouldn’t get locked into identity politics.”

Melvina Hazard, ttff director of community relations who introduced the film and hosted the Q&A informed the audience that it was a unanimous decision by the ttff programming committee to include this film.

“I was struck by how delicately you handled the story, telling it so tenderly,” she said. “You can see that there is a lot of love that went into this film and lots of love in the interactions of the characters.”

I could talk about the script, camera angles, colour, production and sound design of the film but I won’t. The only thing I have to say is: For the enrichment of your own life, please, watch this incredible film.

Image: a still from Margarita, with a Straw

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The short fiction film The Resort, directed by Shadae Lamar Smith, and the fiction feature Sand Dollars, directed by Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán and winner of the Best Fiction Feature prize at the ttff/15, screened at the Festival last Thursday 24 September. Our blogger, Aurora Herrera, attended the screening, where Smith and Guzmán were present.

The Resort comprises a series of three vignettes that follow a young Tobagonian man as he sells love for a living. The film, directed by Shadae Lamar Smith, had its international premiere at the ttff/15.

Smith was born in Miami to Jamaican parents. He has a BA in Theatre from Fordham University in New York City, and is completing an MFA in Film Production from UCLA. The Resort is Lamar’s final project for his programme at UCLA. He explained that he had heard about sex tourism in his parents’ native country of Jamaica, and in Trinidad and Tobago.

“It’s a topic that I’m definitely interested in because when people talk about sex tourism it’s really focused on women and I think that it’s a big issue for men too,” he said. “When I first came here to Trinidad and Tobago, I heard about how it was affecting not only these men but the families associated with these men, especially with regards to STDs being on the rise.”

When asked why he didn’t probe deeply into the emotions of the male protagonist, Smith responded by saying that given that it was a 15-minute film, he felt that he did not have the time to give the issue its proper status.

“I thought it was an extremely complex issue and I think that was not something that could have been presented in 15 minutes of film,” he said. “So I said, let me take more of a clinical approach and have people draw their own conclusions based on that. I’m showing pretty much glimpses into this life instead of trying to give you this deep nuanced approach in 15 minutes.”

The film, which was shot on 16mm film, was dappled with wonderful bursts of colour, giving it a raw and vibrant ambience. The wide shots of the landscapes in and around Arnos Vale and Pigeon Point in Tobago were visually enticing.

“I didn’t look at directors first,” Smith said, of his influences. “I looked more to Caribbean art and the way the more colourful pieces and landscape pieces were presented and that’s how I designed my look. Then from there I looked at directors. I looked at the director of The Harder the Come [Perry Henzell], they shot on 16mm and I wanted to shoot on 16mm as well. I like the way that colour is represented in the 16mm format.”

The film, which was shot in conjunction with the Tobago House of Assembly, obliged their request that the cast be at least 75% from the isles of Trinidad and Tobago. The local cast featured Shea Best, Aleem Marcus Valentine and Cassandra Bonaparte and Stephen Hadeed Jr.

“This was amazing because I wasn’t going to fly people over here form the US to shoot a film,” Smith said. “It was too much money and it loses some kind of authenticity.”

*****

Sand Dollars has gravitas. Inspired by the novel of the same name by Jean Noel Pancrazi, the film explores the relationship between Noelí (Yanet Mojíca), a young, impoverished Dominican woman and Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), a much older and richer French woman. Their interaction unfolds against the backdrop of Las Terrenas, a gorgeous, verdant tourist haven in the Dominican Republic. After three years, Anne is unconditionally in love with Noelí, even though she is aware that Noelí is using her for financial support. Cárdenas and Guzmán are sensitive in their portrayal of the complicated exchanges between the native and the visitor, allowing the audience to experience the deeper layers of these relationships without the garish use of words like prostitution and solicitation.

The film—which has been submitted by the Dominican Republic to the Academy Awards for best foreign language film—is beautiful. I was captivated from the very first frame, where we see the bachata musician Ramon Cordero plaintively singing the song “I Live in Grief”. This underscored my expectations of the emotional resonance of the film and for sure, Cárdenas’s and Guzmán’s work is remarkable. While one would assume that a serious relationship between these two women would be delusional given the contrasts between them, the co-directors’ brilliantly sew gentle hope into the story, suggesting that it is possible the Noelí has feelings for Anne as well.

Here is an excerpt of the Q&A session with Guzmán.

How did the idea [for the film] come about? Did you first read the book and decide that you wanted to make a film, or did an idea come to you before you read the book?

It was two things. The genesis of the film was first the place. We usually think about where we want to shoot before we think of the story or the characters. My husband who directs with me, Israel Cárdenas, is from northern Mexico and I’m from the Dominican Republic so we have to choose where we want to shoot our next project. We shot Jean Gentil (Best Fiction Feature, ttff/11) in the northern part of the DR. I’ve seen it develop from a fishing town and now it’s one of the most touristic places in the DR. French, Italians, Germans, Haitians all mix there. We were sure when we found the book we would read it with double interest. It took some time for us to discover our own feelings about the book. I sort of related to the foreigners’ point of view more than to the locals’ and I asked [myself] if I was like a foreigner in my own country. This made me very curious to direct this film.

The second thing was the music. Bachata music is the soul, the roots of Dominican music. It’s like an interpretation of bolero that Dominicans from the countryside play. In Spanish we say the word despecho, which means “a torn heart” and it refers to men who have been treated badly by women and they want to complain but it is something that can be danced and I thought that that is very much like the Dominican people where something terrible can be happening but they have a smile on their face.

The main characters in the book are men but in the film they are women.

That took a while to happen. We did write the first, second and third [drafts of the script] based on the novel and when we heard that Geraldine Chaplin liked Jean Gentil, we suggested that she would do a secondary role [in Sand Dollars]. Then we thought, “Why keep looking for an older male actor when [we] have an older French woman?” So we said, “Let’s change the script and see what happens.” We did it and we were empowered with the script and felt that now it’s now our story.

[Geraldine] Chaplin visually looks like death; she is so stark. You almost have a visceral reaction when you see them together.

This was something that we had in mind from the beginning. We talked about the dying animal. She looks sick and her days are counted and the girl is sort of the contrary. She is alive, she is beautiful, and she is shining.

I felt sadness watching this film. You can see that Chaplin is torn about the girl. What were you hoping audiences would feel from watching this film?

Every audience sees the film in a different way depending on the baggage that they carry, so depending on what you’ve lived you will see it one way. So there is no one specific message.

How does the film impact you?

It is hard to say how it impacts me because I have made it, I heave crafted every piece of it, Israel and I. Time will tell. I need more distance.

You can see The Resort and Sand Dollars again on Tue 29 September, 6.00pm, at MovieTowne POS.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The fiction feature Second Coming, written and directed by Debbie Tucker Green, screened in the Festival’s Panorama section last Wednesday 23 September. Our blogger, Aurora Herrera, attended the screening, where the director was present.

Second Coming has a sensitive, nuanced style of filmmaking. It also expresses the vocabulary of the domestic life of a family more through what is not said than what is.

The story follows Jackie, her husband Mark, and their eleven-year-old son, JJ, who live in south London. To JJ, the routine life of the household provides a safe space for him to enjoy being a kid with no responsibilities. However, Jackie seems off kilter from the very beginning. She is pregnant and she seems to have no idea how it happened. As the story gradually reveals, she and Mark have not been intimate in quite some time.

As each day passes, Jackie recedes further into herself. Tucker Green creates a sense of claustrophobia with tight camera angles. This stifling feeling pervades the household and more and more cracks appear along the fault lines of the family.

The film remains ambiguous as to Jackie’s true state of mind. She does not acknowledge any extra-marital relations but her unwillingness to tell her husband does raise the level of suspicion. Eventually it is revealed that the couple has suffered four previous miscarriages. The audience comes to understand Jackie’s fears about the pregnancy and also about telling her husband.

Scenes of domestic life are juxtaposed with seemingly mystical events. Jackie begins to have what she calls “visions” that begin with a light rain drip-dripping in her bathroom. Tucker Green once again keeps the camera tight, not panning to the roof for the audience to investigate whether the cause might an unfortunate plumbing issue. As her pregnancy progresses, Jackie begins to suffer from nosebleeds and that light drip-dripping rain becomes a windy tempest. Suffice it to say Mark and JJ do not wake up to a flooded house.

The audience is left to question whether these phenomena are really symptoms of an immaculate conception, omens of the second coming or if Jackie is suffering from any cognitive dysfunction caused by a tumor or some other malady. Truly, the success of this film is in Tucker Green keeping allegory at arms length.

“With the nosebleeds and the rain, I told the special effects guys that I wanted to bend naturalism,” Tucker Green said during the Q&A session. “It was just messing with reality instead of taking her out completely from that place. It’s not real, the house isn’t flooding, but we don’t know if it’s in her head and if she is seeing things.”

Despite the colourful interjection of Jackie’s Jamaican family and the spice of their patois, all of the main characters fall into a state of despair, a feeling which Tucker Green conjures with ellipses in conversation, the blandness of not only their domestic space but also of their interpersonal relationships. The muteness of fear defines the experience of the film. Surfeits in conversation would have broken the delicate silence of sadness that grips the audience.

Jackie eventually has the baby, a girl, and we see the family together one year later celebrating her first birthday. In the last moments of the film, something happens that could only be described as a miracle.

When one audience member asked Tucker Green about the psychology of the main female character and what really happened, the director maintained that she prefers to keep the story ambiguous and let the audience work through it for themselves.

“I’ll leave it as ambiguous,” she said. “I’ve got my view but everyone has their view. Nadine [Marshall, who played Jackie] and I know the truth because she can’t play a character and [not] know what was going on but I thought it was definitive.”

Apart from Marshall, the cast features Kai Francis-Lewis (JJ) and Idris Elba (Mark). I felt that the cast was stellar in their respective roles. Tucker Green commented on the casting process.

“We sent Idris the script and he said he liked it but his schedule is nuts,” she said. “The film was already green-lit without him but it worked out. I also sat down with Nadine to talk to her about it. Nadine is a great actress and this film is so much behind the eyes. As for Kai, he was the first child who came through the door but we didn’t cast him [then]. We saw loads [of other boys] and then we decided he was it.”

One of the audience members commented on the cinematography.

“I liked the car scene with the use of the mirrors,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

“The car was interesting,” said Green. “We did quite a few scenes in cars so we did a lot of hunting around for interesting angles.”

The director was also asked about her experience working with the birds that appear in the film.

“Birds and babies you can’t direct but the birds were alright,” she said. “We had to have birds that weren’t so small that the kids would hurt them and birds that weren’t so big they would hurt the kids. The kids had to rehearse with the birds a few weeks ahead. So the blackbird, we had two, the kids called one “evil bird” because it kept pecking them. You can’t see it but they are cuffed and on very long lines so they won’t fly away. It’s fairly straightforward and you have to be very quiet. In postproduction, you have to paint out the pieces of brass that might have shown.”

You can see Second Coming again on Monday 28 September, 9.00pm, MovieTowne POS.

Sand Dollars, the tender story of an elderly French woman in a relationship with a much younger woman from the Dominican Republic, won the Best Fiction Feature prize last evening at the awards ceremony for the 2015 trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff/15).

Directed by Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, the film beat three other films in the official competition to nab the coveted prize.

The Best Documentary Feature went to Aleksandra Maciuszek’s Casa Blanca, the moving tale of an elderly woman and her middle-aged son who has Down syndrome, as they navigate daily life in Havana.

Casa Blanca also received a special mention for artistic merit by the Amnesty International Human Rights Prize jury.

In the Trinidad and Tobago film categories, Sean Hodgkinson’s Trafficked, about three friends on holiday who become drug mules, walked away with the Best Fiction Feature prize, while Kim Johnson’s Re-percussions: An African Odyssey, about attempts to propagate T&T’s national instrument in Nigeria, won Best Documentary Feature.

The prize for best project at the first ever Caribbean Film Mart went to Kidnapping Inc of Haiti, by Gaethan Chancy, Bruno Mourral and Gilbert Mirambeau, Jr.

Here is a full list of the awards:

Best Film Awards – sponsored by the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited
Best Fiction Feature: Sand Dollars, Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, Dominican Republic/Mexico/Argentina
Best Documentary Feature: Casa Blanca, Aleksandra Maciuszek, Cuba/Mexico/Poland
Best Short Film, Narrative: Mommy Water, Julien Silloray, Guadeloupe
Best Short Film, Documentary: Papa Machete, Jonathan David Kane, Haiti/USA/Barbados

Best Trinidad and Tobago Film Awards – sponsored by the Film Company of Trinidad and Tobago (FilmTT)
Best Trinidad and Tobago Fiction Feature: Trafficked, Sean Hodgkinson
Best Trinidad and Tobago Documentary Feature: Re-percussions: An African Odyssey, Kim Johnson
Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Fiction: Fade to Black, Christopher Guinness
Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Documentary: Riding Bull Cart, Rhonda Chan Soo

People’s Choice Awards – Sponsored by Flow
People’s Choice Award, Best Narrative Feature: Sally’s Way, Joanne Johnson, T&T
People’s Choice Award, Best Documentary Feature: Vanishing Sail, Alexis Andrews, Antigua
People’s Choice Award, Best Short Film: City on the Hill, Patricia Mohammed and Michael Mooleedhar, T&T

Amnesty International Human Rights Prize: My Father’s Land, Miquel Galofré and Tyler Johnston, Bahamas/Haiti/Trinidad and Tobago

Amnesty International Human Rights Prize, Special Mention for Artistic Merit: Casa Blanca, Aleksandra Maciuszek, Cuba/Mexico/Poland

RBC: Focus Filmmakers’ Immersion Pitch Prize: Kojo McPherson, Guyana

Caribbean Film Mart Best Project Award: Kidnapping Inc, Gaethan Chancy, Bruno Mourral, Gilbert Mirambeau, Jr

Best Emerging Trinidad and Tobago Filmmaker (prize sponsored by bpTT): Michael Rochford

BPTT Youth Jury Prize for Best Film: Girlhood, Céline Sciamma, France

BPTT Youth Jury Prize Honourable Mention: Güeros, Alonzo Ruizpalacios, Mexico

BPTT Youth Jury Prize, Special Mention for Cinematography: The Greatest House in the World, Ana V. Bojórquez and Lucía Carreras, Guatemala/Mexico

Image: A still from Sand Dollars

The ttff launched the Caribbean Film Mart (CFM) and Caribbean Film Database last night (September 24), with a reception at HOME in Port of Spain.

Emilie Upczak, ttff’s Creative Director, shared her thoughts on the moment saying, “Today we are birthing the Caribbean Film Industry.”

She acknowledged the ACP Cultures+ Programme, which co-financed the project. The project is also
funded by the European Union (European Development Fund) and implemented by the ACP Group of States.

The Film Mart creates a space for international film industry professionals to meet one-on-one with representatives from fifteen Caribbean film projects in development, as well as to participate in a number of group events and activities, all with the aim of getting the films financed, made and distributed. The thirty industry professionals are drawn from across Europe, Latin America and the USA.

“We had over 100 [applications] and we were really surprised,” Upczak said. “We selected what we think [are] the best of Caribbean voices right now and I feel assured that in the next three to five years that every single project that is in this Film Mart will be made.”

“I would also like to acknowledge the 30 industry professionals who have had the courage and insight to get involved in a new movement,” she added. “We really appreciate you taking this risk and coming down here and we really hope that we are doing you proud.”

The ttff also unveiled the Caribbean Film Database, a website of feature-length independent Caribbean fiction, documentary and experimental feature films from 2000 to the present. The Database—which launched with 537 films—also includes a selected number of Caribbean classics, contain a bibliography of film resources, a Caribbean Women in Film page and links to other film festivals, film commissions and schools in the region. It is also in three languages: English, Spanish and French.

The Caribbean Film Mart and Caribbean Film Database are being implemented in association with the Fundación Global Democracia y Dessarollo from the Dominican Republic, the Association for the Development of Art Cinema and Practice in Guadeloupe, the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema from Cuba, and the Festival Régional et International du Cinéma de Guadeloupe.

Patricia Monpierre of the Association for the Development of Art Cinema and Practice in Guadeloupe said that she was very happy to see the launch of the project.

“I am very happy tonight because all the team of the ttff are working on this with us. We want to continue to enrich the Database year after year. It’s our Database and we want to contribute to it.”

She also accentuated the unifying aspect of the database.

“We make this database online for sharing with everybody because we are one Caribbean—Caribbean English, Caribbean French, Caribbean Spanish, Caribbean Dutch and we have to show to the people of the world that we are one Caribbean.”

Luis Notario of ICAIC from Cuba echoed her sentiments.

“I feel in this moment like we are giving birth to something very important. I feel very strongly about the project, the fruit of much collaboration,” he said.

Notario also highlighted the importance of the CFM.

“These filmmakers get the support from the Film Mart and are also learning, getting insightful comments that will help them for future films,” he said. “I think that we have a challenge which is also an opportunity and it is also a commitment which is to continue this work, [to see] how we can make [the CFM] sustainable.”

Upczak also extended heartfelt thanks and acknowledgement to FLOW, the presenting sponsor of the ttff.

“They started with us when we were only two years old and they have really given us the space to grow and the money to do that and we couldn’t have done it without them.”

She ended by saying, “I would also like to acknowledge the ttff organising committee. We really are a collaborative team and it would be impossible to do what we do without each one of us.”

The mid-length documentary Bottom in de Road, directed by Oyetayo Ojoade and Sharon Syriac, had its world premiere on Tuesday at the ttff/15. Our blogger, Aurora Herrera, attended the screening.

Thought provoking, crass, insightful, and controversial.

Those are all words used to describe Bottom in de Road, a film by Oyetayo Ojoade and his wife Sharon Syriac. The work explores “bottom power”, offering analysis of the female bottom as seen through the gaze of the Caribbean man. The role of the bottom in expressing freedom and as a source of religious controversy are also considered.

The world premiere of this documentary elicited a varying scope of reactions from the viewers.

“Overall it was a bit crass but I didn’t expect so much balance,” one male audience member said. “I expected to be more offended because this society is already a patriarchal, sexist society and you see so much perspective about a woman’s behind everywhere. The Black Venus [Sarah Baartman], and the history that came from her perspective I thought gave more balance. It made the film smarter.”

“It was excellent, I liked how they mixed the humour and it was at the same time serious,” one female audience member said. “Even with the humour there were elements of the serious and a lot of the intellectuals brought out their serious opinion.”

When asked if she found the film offensive in any way, she said that you have to move beyond being offended.

“It’s Bottom in the Road, it has to be misogynistic,” she said. “The director said that it is from the male perspective. That is our culture.”

Ojoade explained his inspiration for the film to the audience saying, “I have got a cross-cultural background; a Trinidadian mother and a Nigerian father. I spent half my life in Nigeria where you see the woman dressed a certain way. They dress in lose clothing that covers their backside. So occasionally you will see the young university student wearing tight fitting jeans and depending on where she goes, she will get harassed. But moving to Trinidad in my adult life, I saw women and young women and girls dressing in revealing clothes exposing the bottom. It was a culture shock for me and that is why I had to do this.”

Oyetayo Ojoade has a BA in Film from the University of the West Indies and is the director of the short documentary films Who Let the Dogs Out? (ttff/08), Shouters and the Control Freak Empire (ttff/10), and co-director of The Madonna Murti (ttff/11), as well as the short fiction film Suck Meh Soucouyant, Suck Meh (ttff/09).

His wife, Sharon Syriac, who co-directed the film, is a lecturer in Communications at the University of Trinidad and Tobago and a Postgraduate student of Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies. She is also the co-director of The Madonna Murti.

“Because of the sensitivity of the topic and the controversy that it would generate, yes it was a deliberate technique in order to draw the audience in to plug in some very serious issues which we feel should be considered,” Syriac said.

Along with the man on the street, the film featured interviews with Iwer George, Denyse Plummer, Destra Garcia, gender studies expert Gabrielle Hosein, scholar at the University of the West Indies Gordon Rohlehr, and sexologist Dr Giriraj Ramnanan.

One audience member in particular did not appreciate the lengthy discussion and categorisation of female bottoms by a regular man on the street, who was referred to as “the prose version of Iwer George”, by another audience member.

“It was like categorising animals almost,” the said about the cataloguing of female glutei maximi.

The film makes a very weak attempt at balancing the examination of the female derriere with that of male behinds, allotting about six per cent of screen time to the topic.

One audience member commented, “The bit about men not having significant behinds, I wanted to ask, are we in the dark ages? That was unnecessary.”

Another audience member said,” I think this film is fantastic and should go international!”

I think it would be rather interesting to ask if the women featured were these men’s daughters, sisters, girlfriends or wives, if they would still feel this much gusto for the film.

The film is definitely thought-provoking. There are many healthy discourses that can come out of it. For example, there is the question of whether the showing off of the bottom is an act of true freedom and independence or rather the fulfilling of a biological act; where the female attempts to be desirous to the male for him to choose to mate with her, which when stripped down, is basically submission to the male choice and need.

Moreover, this dialogue can also be looked at in the paradigm of colonisation and its social and psychological impact.

As gender studies expert Gabrielle Hosein says in the film, “We have to understand the the obsession, the praise and the adoration of the female bottom in Caribbean culture is not only because female bodies in and of themselves—regardless of their shape and size—are beautiful, but it is because of a long colonial emphasis on the bottoms of African women.”

The film also engenders questions such as: Are women even aware of these concepts as they don their revealing costumes? Do they consider the theories and archetypes associated with a postcolonial society and still make that decision consciously as a means of expressing their freedom, or are they merely following trends and have no idea what their displays truly mean to themselves and others?

One female audience member asked if men realise whether there is a fine line between dressing up for Carnival and looking cute and sexy as opposed to being vulgar. Of course vulgarity is a matter of perspective but the question can also be added to the discourse.

Syriac said, “It took us three years to make this film. He [Ojoade] did all the filming and he followed all of those female bottoms. A lot of the times on the street when he followed women, they didn’t know that their bottoms were being taped, so that it one reason why we didn’t have the women respond because he had to do it undercover. I was not there.”

While I understand that social media has normalised the presence of cameras at every fete, club night and lime, most times, the photographer will ask if a photo or video can be taken. This seems like common courtesy even if filming on the streets. It seemed sort of creepy for Ojoade to do all of this in secret, from the back.

Also, there was a scene with Saucy Pow which was backed by the song Boom Bye Bye, a song by Buju Banton whish is widely regarded as anti-gay. I felt that it was quite offensive.

You can see Bottom in the Road on the following dates:

Sat 26 Sept, 3.00pm, MovieTowne Tobago
Sat 26 Sept, 5.00pm, UWI Q&A
Tue 29 Sept, 5.30pm, MovieTowne Tobago
Sun 27 Sept, 11.00am, MovieTowne POS Q&A