Kali­fa Clyne

Fea­ture films, doc­u­men­taries, new me­dia pro­duc­tions and in­for­ma­tive work­shops all be­gin to­day with the start of the sev­enth an­nu­al Trinidad & To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val. The fes­ti­val opens tonight with a gala and the screen­ing of the high­ly-ac­claimed doc­u­men­tary Mar­ley, about reg­gae su­per­star Bob Mar­ley, at Queen's Hall, Port-of-Spain. The fes­ti­val cel­e­brates Caribbean film, but in­cludes in­ter­na­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions and has been grow­ing steadi­ly in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the years of its ex­is­tence. In just two short weeks, end­ing on Oc­to­ber 2, a to­tal of 175 films, in­clud­ing new me­dia and ex­per­i­men­tal shorts will be screened. Of these, 38 will be world pre­mieres. The films shown through­out the fes­ti­val orig­i­nate from coun­tries in the Caribbean as well as Cana­da, Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca. Top­ics to be cov­ered will range from the black pow­er move­ment to zom­bies, for­mer prime min­is­ters, so­ca and choco­late.

Movie­go­ers can look for­ward to the Cuban fea­ture Juan of the Dead, a film about zom­bies in Ha­van­na, Call Me Kuchu, which deals with the per­se­cu­tion of the gay com­mu­ni­ty in Ugan­da and The Iran job, a film about a young man from the US Vir­gin Is­lands who finds him­self in Iran amid ten­sions be­tween both coun­tries. The film Shame promis­es to be an eye-open­ing look at sex ad­dic­tion and, while short films such as Shaun Es­cayg's Fish and Roger Alex­is' Douen ex­plore both lo­cal cul­ture and folk­lore. An­oth­er high­light of the fes­ti­val is the con­tri­bu­tion by mem­bers of the YM­CA Men Tour­ing Pro­gramme, a short film called Shoot to Live, made by young men from the Beetham area. Films will be shown at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain and To­ba­go for the cost of $25 and mem­bers of the pub­lic will al­so be able to take ad­van­tage of free screen­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Lit­tle Carib The­atre and sev­er­al oth­er lo­ca­tions list­ed on the film fes­ti­vals Web site. "Last year we had a won­der­ful fes­ti­val and I be­lieve that has set a stan­dard for peo­ple to ex­pect a lot from us," said fes­ti­val di­rec­tor Bruce Padding­ton. "We are see­ing the in­ter­est and peo­ple seem to be look­ing for­ward to the fes­ti­val more than pre­vi­ous years."

Padding­ton added that sub­mis­sions of films had al­so in­creased. "We have a great pro­gramme this year, which in­cludes films, train­ing work­shops, act­ing work­shops and film re­view." Padding­ton said the next two weeks will give the pub­lic the chance to see films they would not nor­mal­ly be ex­posed to. "There is a grow­ing mar­ket in T&T for films that are not just about su­per­heroes and car chas­es." He said the film fes­ti­val al­so had the ad­di­tion­al val­ue of in­form­ing and ed­u­cat­ing view­ers about the films they watched. "Hav­ing di­rec­tors present to in­ter­act and an­swer ques­tions al­lows for a more in­formed and ed­u­cat­ed au­di­ence," Padding­ton said. Though the fes­ti­val pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for film lovers to gath­er and ap­pre­ci­ate a num­ber of films, it al­so has the added ben­e­fit of pro­vid­ing ex­po­sure to many up­com­ing film­mak­ers. It pro­vides a plat­form for them to show their work among peers.

Film­mak­ers will al­so ben­e­fit from more than $170,000 in cash and prizes, in­clud­ing trips to the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val in New York and Sil­ver­Docs film fes­ti­val in Mary­land. Aside from fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits, film­mak­ers and as­pir­ing film­mak­ers are al­so al­lowed to take ad­van­tage of sev­er­al part­ner­ships be­tween the film fes­ti­val and pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions such as RBC, bpTT and Flow. These part­ner­ships pro­vide ex­po­sure, as Flow will make films avail­able with its On De­mand ser­vice im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the fes­ti­val and bpTT pro­vides com­mu­ni­ty screen­ings. The part­ner­ship with RBC's Im­mer­sion ini­tia­tive pro­vides de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and ex­po­sure lead­ing to a grant for film­mak­ers. The film fes­ti­val, found­ed in 2006, is an an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tion of Caribbean films and seeks to fa­cil­i­tate the growth of the Caribbean film in­dus­try by host­ing work­shops, pan­el dis­cus­sions, sem­i­nars, con­fer­ences and net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with in­ter­na­tion­al film pro­fes­sion­als.