The an­nu­al T&T Film Fes­ti­val (TTFF) 2015 kicked off last week at the pri­ma­ry lo­ca­tions Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain, Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, and the Film Build­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. The me­dia was af­ford­ed a brief pre­view of some of the T&T-made films last week­end. JA­NINE CHARLES-FAR­RAY re­views four of them.

FADE TO BLACK

(Nom­i­nat­ed for best lo­cal short film–fic­tion)

One of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed films of the fes­ti­val does not fall with­in the fea­ture film cat­e­go­ry, but among the fic­tion­al short nar­ra­tives. Clock­ing in at on­ly 11 min­utes, Fade to Black breaks new ground in in­dige­nous cin­e­matog­ra­phy through the eyes of di­rec­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Oliv­er Milne and di­rec­tor/ an­i­ma­tor Christo­pher Guin­ness.

Syn­op­sis: Off the coast of north­ern Trinidad, some­time in the near fu­ture, Thomas, an el­der­ly man, strug­gles to hold on to his mem­o­ries in his last days. Mean­while his care­giv­er, An­ge­lo, en­gages in an on­line re­la­tion­ship with the ne­far­i­ous Dark Eyes, which proves to have cost­ly reper­cus­sions.

The pub­lic would be fa­mil­iar with Guin­ness' work in the emo­tive and up­beat fic­tion­al short films, POTHOUND and Cap­tain TnT, which have been both crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed and gone vi­ral sev­er­al times over in the past four years. Fade to Black, shot in Guin­ness' sig­na­ture short clip edit­ing style with an­i­ma­tion and VFX-styled in­fu­sions, is de­cid­ed­ly dark­er in tone and con­text.

In every project, Guin­ness seems to draw heav­i­ly from his own life and per­son­al in­spi­ra­tion. Fade to Black is no dif­fer­ent. De­scrib­ing the past year as a "tough time," Guin­ness was se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the loss of his fa­ther and oth­er per­son­al life changes. Fade to Black, per­haps un­in­ten­tion­al­ly, ques­tions the sig­nif­i­cance of hold­ing on to the past with a poignant sense of long­ing for things that are gone and it close­ly ex­am­ines the im­por­tance of mem­o­ries.

Fade to Black is not a su­per­fi­cial film. It delves deeply and with­out hes­i­ta­tion in­to cere­bral and spir­i­tu­al con­cepts.

It was an ab­solute plea­sure to see vet­er­an and ac­claimed ac­tor Al­bert Laveau (as the old­est ver­sion of lead char­ac­ter, Thomas) in what could be one of his most mem­o­rable and sig­na­ture per­for­mances on film.

There was an ex­cit­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion of the choice of Laveau as the old­er ver­sion of Thomas set with­in this fu­tur­is­tic and cut­ting-edge nar­ra­tive. It felt mo­men­tous, al­most like the meet­ing of two forces, tra­di­tion­al stage the­atre and the new cre­ative medi­um, film. Laveau brought a grav­i­tas and le­git­i­ma­cy to a fu­tur­is­tic por­tray­al of T&T.

It is a sci­ence-fic­tion short film with deep mes­sages about love, loss and long­ing. Fade to Black so­lid­i­fies Guin­ness' sig­na­ture aes­thet­ic and is per­haps one of the best and most cut­ting edge film pro­duc­tions from a T&T film­mak­er to date.

DOWN AND OUT

Down and Out is a short doc­u­men­tary from stu­dents of the BA in film at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. It was pro­duced by cur­rent Year Three stu­dents David Vil­lafan­na, Michaela Spenser and Shan­ice Mar­tin.

Syn­op­sis: The film ex­plores what may be one of the over­looked ills of so­ci­ety, the oc­cur­rence of home­less­ness and the ef­forts cur­rent­ly be­ing made to as­sist those dis­placed and on the streets.

The stu­dents con­sult­ed with the St Vin­cent De Paul cen­tre as well as the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons.

First-hand ac­counts of per­sons cur­rent­ly deal­ing with home­less­ness were the main nar­ra­tive of the film. The mes­sage drew the view­er along from hor­ror sto­ry to hor­ror sto­ry where the in­ter­view sub­jects told of their ex­pe­ri­ences with street life.

Some of the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to home­less­ness in­clud­ed ex­po­sure to drugs and drug abuse, HIV and Aids, rob­bery of as­sets, phys­i­cal vi­o­lence, de­por­ta­tion back to Trinidad and forced place­ment in a men­tal in­sti­tu­tion.

These heart-wrench­ing ac­counts were in some cas­es dif­fi­cult to watch and re­vealed just how eas­i­ly one could fall in­to a sit­u­a­tion which robs one of the se­cu­ri­ty of a place to call home, its last­ing ef­fects and the dif­fi­cul­ty of re­cov­er­ing from such a state.

The Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons was the set­ting for the doc­u­men­tary. Man­ag­er of the fa­cil­i­ty Roger Wat­son dis­cussed the con­tin­u­ous strug­gle the cen­tre has faced to de­liv­er care and ser­vices to those most in need.

TRAF­FICKED

(Nom­i­nat­ed for best lo­cal fea­ture)

Traf­ficked is a 72-minute fea­ture film writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Sean Hodgkin­son, and was co-pro­duced by the late me­dia per­son­al­i­ty, ra­dio and TV pro­duc­er/host Mar­cia Henville and Garth St Clair of the Eye on De­pen­den­cy ra­dio pro­gramme. The film stars Kia Rol­lock, Gy­er­li­ni Clarke, Aaron N Charles with Brett Ben­gochea, Ab­di Wait­he, Bren­don O'Brien and Thalia Bap­tiste.

Syn­op­sis: While on va­ca­tion, three ad­ven­tur­ous friends are se­duced by stranger's wealth and charm. George, Pen­ny and Na­dia soon dis­cov­er they are pawns in a dead­ly game.

In gen­er­al, the film looks good, with good use of scenic es­tab­lish­ing shots, cou­pled with at­trac­tive cin­e­matog­ra­phy with a warm colour palette, which re­tained its Caribbean aes­thet­ic while still giv­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al feel.

From the open­ing din­ner scene, every frame ful­ly cap­tured the sub­tle lay­ers of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and nu­anced body lan­guage among the char­ac­ters bril­liant­ly di­rect­ed by Hodgkin­son. Like any typ­i­cal din­ner among friends, the scene be­gan with light-heart­ed con­ver­sa­tion and ef­fu­sive grat­i­tude to a gen­er­ous host, with a dash of well-timed com­e­dy from the jovial and ef­fer­ves­cent Pen­ny, played by Kia Rol­lock.

How­ev­er, there is a dark­er lay­er to this seem­ing­ly pris­tine dou­ble-date va­ca­tion. Among the char­ac­ters there were many red flag so­cial cues tex­tured in the in­ter­ac­tion. This set a par­al­lel tone–warn­ing the au­di­ence that be­neath the veil of ci­vil­i­ty the scene is set for a well-paced un­rav­el­ling of a tragedy.

In the post screen­ing in­ter­view, Hodgkin­son con­firmed that Traf­ficked is but one of a planned se­ries of sto­ries to be pro­duced from re­ports col­lect­ed by the Eye on De­pen­den­cy of Caribbean na­tion­als who have fall­en prey to both drugs and hu­man traf­fick­ing. St Clair shared fright­en­ing sto­ries of T&T cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly in­car­cer­at­ed in the UK and oth­er ter­ri­to­ries abroad as well as na­tion­als from oth­er Caribbean states im­pris­oned lo­cal­ly.

CITY ON THE HILL

Watch­ing this doc­u­men­tary will change your per­cep­tion of Laven­tille, Bel­mont and East Port-of-Spain for the bet­ter–per­ma­nent­ly.

The film, di­rect­ed by Michael Mooleed­har and Prof Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed, does an ex­cel­lent job of un­earthing a moun­tain of ev­i­dence from which any cit­i­zen of T&T can draw on­ly one con­clu­sion: Laven­tille is the birth­place and deep bel­ly of cul­tur­al in­ge­nu­ity, foun­da­tion of cre­ative in­no­va­tion, the source of rich in­dige­nous re­sources, re­li­gious plu­ral­i­ty and the po­ten­tial in­cu­ba­tor for our cre­ative di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Syn­op­sis: City on the Hill is a look at the his­to­ry of the com­mu­ni­ties erect­ed on the hill­side slopes of Laven­tille. The film ex­am­ines the evo­lu­tion of the che­quered re­la­tion­ship be­tween the land­scape and its in­hab­i­tants, as well as se­lect­ed as­pects of Laven­tille's ar­chi­tec­ture.

More than that, the film speaks to the in­domitable will of its in­hab­i­tants, the strength of per­se­ver­ance to claim their com­mu­ni­ty as one loved and trea­sured, in spite of its some­times over-am­pli­fied and pub­li­cised neg­a­tive el­e­ments.

Nar­rat­ed by Wen­dell Man­war­ren in a vi­brant gri­ot ca­dence, the doc­u­men­tary us­es ex­cerpts from the writ­ings of gi­ants like po­et lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott and pro­lif­ic writer CLR James, who re­flect on the beau­ty and po­ten­tial of Laven­tille.

The sound­track al­so in­cludes archival pan live per­for­mances from the 1940s and rap­so leg­end Lancelot Layne's Ghet­to, a thriv­ing puls­ing de­fi­ance from a com­mu­ni­ty fed up with the ex­ter­nal per­spec­tives forced up­on it and the cir­cum­stances of its hard ex­is­tence.

"You think it soft, in the ghet­to?" Lane chal­lenges to drum­ming ry­thmns be­neath scenic im­ages of the wind­ing streets and curv­ing tracks from Pic­cadil­ly Street up to the Our La­dy of Fa­ti­ma RC Church at the tallest hill peak.

City on the Hill mar­ries a ro­man­tic and po­et­ic tone with the tes­ti­mo­ni­als and sto­ries of the com­mu­ni­ty's di­verse in­hab­i­tants. The re­li­gious com­plex­i­ty of Laven­tille is high­light­ed and sur­pris­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties are drawn be­tween the iconog­ra­phy of the Gon­za­les com­mu­ni­ty Hin­du Mandir and the Or­isha rites of the Ra­da Com­mu­ni­ty. The film showed a sim­i­lar­i­ty of pride in his­to­ry, lega­cy and the ho­n­our­ing of an­ces­tors.

City on the Hill is a love sto­ry to Laven­tille and joins a pan­theon of doc­u­men­taries that high­light the bril­liance Be­hind the Bridge–a trend one hopes to see con­tin­ued as the lo­cal film in­dus­try pre­serves and con­serves the na­tion­al lega­cy through the au­dio vi­su­al medi­um. City on the Hill makes a con­vinc­ing case for a fas­ci­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ty of­ten dis­missed be­cause of the per­pet­u­a­tion of on­ly one side of its sto­ry.

More in­fo & screen­ing times:

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