The British Council Caribbean has been carrying out a number of programmes in T&T over the last few months. The council’s Caribbean Arts manager Annalee Davis said the implementation of these programmes was a part of establishing and continuing cultural relations between the UK and the Caribbean.

She said it’s about demonstrating that the UK has something to share and something to learn when it comes to the arts, the creative economy and cultural industries.

One project is a script development workshop which was carried out in partnership with the T&T Film Festival from March 8-12, facilitated by international script development consultant, Ludo Smolski. Davis said this workshop was implemented in response to concerns from stakeholders in the T&T film industry that there are issues around writing, script development, script editing and story editing. “Rather than just imposing a programme, we wanted to build relationships with entities on the ground who know what their needs are and partner with them to shape programming that fits the local context.”

In addition to the workshop, Davis said there was a mentoring component built into the programme so that it will continue when Smolski returns to the UK.

Another initiative is a creative journalism workshop in partnership with the NGC Bocas Literary Festival. Davis said it has been suggested that there is a lack of writing about the arts for general audiences, and it would be useful “to provide journalists who are writing about the arts or have an interest in the arts some of the specificities around the various arts”.

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For the sixth straight year, the University of the West Indies (UWI) Film Programme will partner with the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff), which runs from 17 September to 01 October, to host a series of film screenings, workshops and other events during the upcoming Festival.

This year the events will take place at the Film Programme’s new building at 12 Carmody Road, St Augustine.

Things kick off on 18 September with a film-producing workshop with Andrea Calderwood, from 10am to 1pm. Calderwood is the producer of films such as The Last King of Scotland (2006), which won an Oscar for star Forest Whitaker, and Half of a Yellow Sun (2013), an epic account of the Biafran war starring Thandie Newton, which opens the ttff/13.

Events continue with a day of documentary films on September 20. The lineup is: No Bois Man No Fraid (10am), a documentary about stickfighting by local filmmaker Christopher Laird; Fatal Assistance (11.45am), about the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake; Songs of Redemption (1:30PM), about the rehabilitation of prison inmates in Jamaica through reggae music; and at 3.15pm, Forward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution, by UWI lecturer Dr Bruce Paddington, about the events leading to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.

On 21 September a collection of UWI student films will be screened from 7pm. They include The Gang That Walks, which looks at the men of the controversial Nation of Islam in Trinidad and Tobago; If I Could Fly, the story of an unhappy young girl whose wish is to fly like her kite; Lime of the Dead, a comedy about a group of young men whose friend becomes a zombie; and Mystic Blue, about a couple that try to hold their relationship together despite their different beliefs.

Then on 24 September a series of Caribbean fiction films will be screened. These are: I Am a Director (12pm), a comedy from Puerto Rico; The Kid Who Lies (1:45pm), a Venezuelan film about a 13-year-old’s search for his mother; Melaza (3:45pm), a Cuban drama about a couple’s struggle to make ends meet; and at 5:30pm, God Loves the Fighter, a film by T&T’s Damian Marcano about a young man from east Port of Spain who reluctantly begins working for a gang leader.

On 25 September at 6:30pm, the film festival welcomes Dr. Malini Guha, assistant professor of Film Studies at Carleton University, Canada, who will give a lecture about the cinematic representation of Caribbean life and culture in London. Then on 26 September at 7.00pm Dr Gabrielle Hezekiah, lecturer in the Department of Literature, Communication and Cultural Studies, will host a package of films from the ttff/13’s New Media programme, co-curated with ARC magazine.

From 2pm on 28 September there will be a screening of films from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, which will be introduced by their curator, Dr Mary Leonard.

Finally, on 30 September, Festival events on campus come to a close with a retrospective of the films of John Akomfrah. Several of the acclaimed director’s works will be screened, including his newest film, The Stuart Hall Project, about the famed Jamaican-British intellectual. Akomfrah himself will attend the retrospective.

All events, except the Andrea Calderwood workshop are free and open to the public. To register for the workshop, call 621.0709.

Image: A still from Mystic Blue

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A selection of films by the acclaimed British director John Akomfrah will screen at the 2013 trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff), which runs from 17 September to 01 October.

Known as one of the founders of black British cinema, Akomfrah, who will attend the ttff/13, has made dozens of films in a career stretching back almost 30 years. He has earned scores of international film awards and prizes and other honours, including an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List. He is also a governor of the British Film Institute.

Of Ghanaian heritage, Akomfrah was a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective in 1982. He produced a broad range of work within this critically lauded group, including his provocative feature debut, Handsworth Songs (1986), a documentary about race riots in Britain.

Lyrical, poetic and essayistic, Akomfrah’s films have always traversed the worlds of cinema and television, the art gallery and the film festival, community centres and cultural institutions, conferences, symposiums and academic institutions. All the while, he has maintained a concern for documenting and interrogating the Afro-Caribbean and the African experiences in the UK.

Akomfrah’s documentary The Nine Muses (2010), which used Homer’s Odyssey as a framing device to explore Caribbean and African migration to post-war Britain, was screened at the ttff/11. His film The Stuart Hall Project (2013)—a portrait of the seminal left-wing Jamaican-British intellectual, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival—will screen at the ttff/13 as part of the Festival’s tribute to him.

Four other films will screen as part of the tribute: Handsworth Songs; Who Needs a Heart (1991, a fictionalised history of the Black Power movement in Britain); The Last Angel of History (1996, an exploration of the pop-culture phenomenon known as Afrofuturism); and Peripeteia (2012, a haunting work of dialogue-free fiction inspired by portraits of black figures by the sixteenth-century German artist Albrecht Dürer).

“John Akomfrah has made a significant, original and influential contribution to cinema, providing a much-needed channel for black British voices,” said ttff editorial director Jonathan Ali. “We are proud to be hosting this tribute to him, and honoured that he will be a guest of the ttff/13.”

In addition to Akomfrah’s films playing throughout the Festival’s programme, there will be a day dedicated to him at the University of the West Indies (30 September), on which all his films in the ttff/13 programme will be shown and he will engage in a conversation about his work.

Image: A still from Peripeteia