Zahra Gor­don

The per­son­al is al­ways po­lit­i­cal, ac­cord­ing to Trinidad-born in­de­pen­dent film­mak­er and head of the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Black­man­Vi­sion, Camp­bell X. And when it comes to film, Camp­bell is con­stant­ly mak­ing po­lit­i­cal state­ments.

In fact, Camp­bell's en­try in­to film was some­what po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. Af­ter leav­ing T&T to at­tend uni­ver­si­ty in the UK in the ear­ly 1990s, Camp­bell start­ed out as a trainee cam­era-per­son at the Lon­don Film and Tele­vi­sion School. She even­tu­al­ly start­ed mak­ing her own films to fill a void she had ob­served.

"I want­ed to tell sto­ries that I don't think were be­ing told about peo­ple who were LGBT (les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der) and al­so who were peo­ple of colour. There wasn't a lot of that be­ing told in terms of mov­ing im­age and there still isn't," she said dur­ing an in­ter­view at her fam­i­ly's Pe­tit Val­ley home last week.

Camp­bell's ear­ly work in­clud­ed made-for-TV doc­u­men­tary shorts like the 1993 Rag­ga Gyal D'bout, which delved in­to the so-called "out­ra­geous" fe­male fans of dance­hall (rag­ga) mu­sic. An­oth­er was BD Women, which ex­am­ined black les­bian lives from the 1960s to 90s. BD Women in­clud­ed in­ter­views and drama­ti­sa­tions of black les­bian sto­ries from 1920s Harlem, New York.

Pol­i­tics ex­tend to Camp­bell's themes-fem­i­nist, queer, and Caribbean sto­ry­telling and aes­thet­ics-and even her name. The "X" in Camp­bell's name was adopt­ed af­ter civ­il-rights ac­tivist Mal­colm X and rep­re­sents her re­jec­tion of the ef­fect slav­ery had on black iden­ti­ty.

Camp­bell al­so looked close­ly at the im­pact of slav­ery on in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ships in her 2006 short Lega­cy, which was shot in T&T.

"Lega­cy was ini­tial­ly based on some­thing per­son­al, but it has uni­ver­sal ap­peal. The themes I was ex­plor­ing were big themes on the lega­cy of slav­ery in the African di­as­po­ra but I had to bring it down to the per­son­al so that peo­ple could ac­tu­al­ly re­late to it. So that it wasn't this ab­stract con­cept. I can't talk about slav­ery and be­have like my an­ces­tors weren't slaves and like that had no im­pact on me," she said.

Lega­cy won Camp­bell the 2007 Out­stand­ing Doc­u­men­tary Short Grand Ju­ry Award at Out­fest and Best Ex­per­i­men­tal Awards at the 2007 San Diego Women's Film Fes­ti­val.

This was not Camp­bell's on­ly well-re­ceived work, how­ev­er. Her films have screened in­ter­na­tion­al­ly at the Tate Britain, Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, Frame­line Film Fes­ti­val, Arnofili Gallery, Fu­sion, and the Lon­don Les­bian and Gay Film Fes­ti­val among many. Her most re­cent work, Stud Life, al­so screened at the T&T Film Fes­ti­val last year.

Stud Life is the sto­ry of best friends JJ, a black les­bian, and Seb, a white gay man. Their friend­ship is test­ed by per­son­al re­la­tion­ships. It's a "bro­mance", a bud­dy movie, said Camp­bell.

"When you see LGBT films they tend to be white and when you see ur­ban films they tend to be straight, and I want­ed to show that there's an ur­ban ex­pe­ri­ence in LGBT in which young white British peo­ple chat pa­tois and are in­flu­enced by dance­hall, rap and hip-hop mu­sic cul­ture and style."

The film is al­so po­lit­i­cal. "A lot of my work deals with fe­male mas­culin­i­ty. In terms of main­stream LGBT, the mas­cu­line fe­male is of­ten in the shad­ows. I want­ed to bring her out of the shad­ows in­to the light."

Her work is of­ten re­ferred to as ex­per­i­men­tal and Camp­bell says she pur­pose­ly makes films that re­move view­ers from their com­fort zone.

"It's sup­posed to be provoca­tive. I deal with a lot of chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult top­ics. I deal with very niche ar­eas and I al­ways like to give peo­ple vi­su­al plea­sure and make them laugh, make them feel some­thing, make them see the hu­man­i­ty in peo­ple who's ex­pe­ri­ences may not be ini­tial­ly viewed as uni­ver­sal."

Af­ter hear­ing Camp­bell's de­scrip­tion of her artis­tic phi­los­o­phy, it may be easy to la­bel her an ac­tivist. This is a term she's not be­hold­en to, how­ev­er.

"I don't put my­self up as a role mod­el. My sto­ries are prob­lem­at­ic and my film shows that we are all com­plex, flawed peo­ple, no mat­ter who we are. But there is beau­ty and hu­man­i­ty in be­ing flawed."