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

georgia popplewell and filmmaker shola lynch in conversation

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Watch the powerful documentary, “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners”, on ttfilmfestival.com this weekend, and join us on Facebook Live for a conversation between Georgia Popplewell and Shola Lynch, writer + director of “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners”, followed by a q+a session. Sunday 12 July, at 5:00pm

“Free Angela and All Political Prisoners”, streaming this weekend at ttfilmfestival.com/watchamovieonus, is a tribute to Angela Davis, radical political activist and leader who spent five decades campaigning for racial justice and respect for black lives in the US and African diaspora. Her work around issues of gender, race, class and prisons has influenced social movements for generations. Directed by Shola Lynch, the acclaimed documentary chronicles the life of Angela Davis as a young college professor and explores how social activism implicated her in a botched kidnapping attempt that ended with a shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.

“Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” will stream to viewers in the Caribbean at ttfilmfestival.com/watchamovieonus, on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 July, from midnight on Friday night to 11:59pm on Sunday.

Shola Lynch is an award-winning filmmaker best known for the feature documentary, “FREE ANGELA & All Political Prisoners” (streaming this weekend at ttfilmfestival.com) and the Peabody Award winning documentary “CHISOLM ’72: Unbought & Unbossed”. Her independent film body of work and her other collaborative projects feed her passion to bring history alive with captivating stories of people, places and events. Since 2013 she has also served as the Curator of the Moving Image & Recorded Sound division of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 2016, Shola became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Georgia Popplewell is a Trinidadian writer and media producer and managing director of the international citizen media project Global Voices. She has worked in independent media since 1989 and has written extensively on culture, music, film, and sport. She started her career at the pioneering Trinidad and Tobago television production company Banyan, and is a founding member of Earth Television. She has worked on productions such as the Nickelodeon pre-school series Gullah Gullah Island and helmed the production team for the feature documentary 25 Years of West Indies Cricket. In 2005, Georgia started Caribbean Free Radio, the Caribbean’s first podcast.

The #WatchAMovieOnUs online streaming series is presented in partnership with The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago.

Looking for a way to beat the cabin fever of ‘self-isolation’?

ttff is delighted to present the #WatchAMovieOnUs: online screening series, in partnership with NGC (The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago).

As part of our fifteenth anniversary celebrations, from 28 March to 10 April, ttff will stream fourteen trinidad+tobago film festival favourites—one per day—for free via the ttff website. Films will be available for 24 hours each.

Our screening schedule will be posted to the ttff Facebook page over the next few days, so check out and follow our event page at: https://www.facebook.com/events/220642585807814/

UPDATE: 22 May – the 2020 ttff call for submissions has now closed.

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ttff/20 celebrating 15 years in 2020!

Port of Spain, Monday 03 February 2020: The trinidad+tobago film festival is pleased to announce the call for submissions for our 15th anniversary festival, ttff/20! Submissions can be made through our festival portal on Film Freeway.

The ttff seeks to highlight excellence in filmmaking through the exhibition of fiction and documentary feature and short films made in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean and its diaspora. The Festival therefore accepts submissions from Caribbean filmmakers in the region and in the diaspora; and international filmmakers with films from or about the Caribbean or its diaspora. Submissions must have been completed after 01 January 2018. For full submission guidelines and categories, please visit our portal on Film Freeway.

ttff/20 will include new shorts, and features, narrative films, documentaries and experimental films, which explore the Caribbean experience. As always, the festival will include curated film screenings at Movietowne (Port of Spain, San Fernando and Tobago) and a programme of outdoor screenings of favourite classics, People’s Choice and jury award-winning films.

In 2020 we’re also launching a new submission and prize category for student filmmakers (whether secondary or tertiary) to encourage and support the early careers of emerging talent.

Our training and professional development programmes will continue to be a core offering of ttff in 2020, with the launch of Masterclasses (intensive 3-day workshops led by international industry professionals), the re-introduction of filmmaker panels, and continuing our introductory industry workshops, and youth-focused mentorship and training.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit our frequently asked questions or drop us a line at hello@ttfilmfestival.com.

Please click the button below to submit your film to ttff/20 via FilmFreeway.

Gone but Not Forgotten

Ray Funk helps to kick off ttff’s 15th anniversary year!

The trinidad+tobago film festival is delighted to reprise beloved carnival aficionado, Ray Funk’s video presentation and talk, ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’, as part of our 15th anniversary celebrations! On 12 February at the National Museum and Art Gallery, Funk will be presenting a celebration of pan pioneers who have passed away. The presentation will include a newly discovered ten minute film called ‘Panboo’ (shot in 1954),​ as well as clips of pan visionaries Ellie Mannette, Kim Loy Wong, Cliff Alexis, Pat Bishop, Ken ‘Professor’ Philmore, Clyde Bradley and Jit Samaroo. This presentation was first offered as part of the film festival’s numerous programs last August at Carifesta.

This programme represents Funk’s desire to offer, in one event, an opportunity to let his audience hear and see these pioneers of pan talk, and look at rare clips of pan in concert, festival, and on the streets at Carnival. “I want to let the history of pan unfold from the voices of the icons who contributed to its history.” The clips come from various films, television programmes and private sources. They are primarily from Ray Funk’s own collection with assistance from Christopher Laird of Banyan Archives and Timmy Mora of Visual Arts and Production.

Since CARIFESTA, Funk has continued to search for more rare early footage and is excited to screen what he believes is the first film about steelpan. He found a newspaper clipping in a Canadian newspaper from 1955 referring to this short film, and arranged for it to be digitised from an archive.  He only got a copy several weeks ago and is very excited to share it. “Before Panboo, there were a couple very short clips of steelbands in newsreels, but this is the first film about pan. It features the Woodbrook band, Dixie Stars, who had traveled to Toronto as the first Esso Steel Band and later settled in Bermuda. It traces the evolution of pan from skin drums to steel, and it seems to have only ever had a few public showings in Canada back in the 1950s. I believe it is the first time anyone has seen this film in over sixty years!”

Ray Funk has done a number of previous presentations for the trinidad+tobago film festival of historic film clips on Trinidad Carnival, calypso, pan and mas. A retired Alaskan trial judge, Funk has been coming to Trinidad regularly for over two decades, primarily during carnival. He has written dozens and dozens of articles for all three Trinidad daily newspapers, co-written books on Invaders and Northern Illinois Steelband, and been a Fulbright US scholar. 

Gone But Not Forgotten is presented in partnership with The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC), The National Museum and Art Gallery of Trinidad and Tobago and The Central Bank Museum. 

12 February 2020, 6pm-8pm
National Museum and Art Gallery, Frederick Street, Port of Spain

This event is free and open to the public. All are welcome!