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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Painting the world

by

20100907

In 2009, the TT Film Fes­ti­val (TTFF) pre­sent­ed the Peo­ple's Choice Award to Pro­fes­sor Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed for the best lo­cal short film for Coolie Pink and Green. In 2010, an­oth­er short film pro­duced by Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed, but co-di­rect­ed along­side 25-year-old film­mak­er Michael Mooleed­har, will be fea­tured at the fes­ti­val. The film is apt­ly en­ti­tled, Sev­en­teen Colours. Prof Mo­hammed, who is the cam­pus co-or­di­na­tor at the School for Grad­u­ate Stud­ies and Re­search at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, told the Guardian her over­all in­tent was to even­tu­al­ly pro­duce a film that doc­u­ments the in­den­ture­ship of In­di­ans and the set­tle­ment of Asians to the Caribbean. In the mean­time, she con­tin­ues to ex­per­i­ment with short films, this even as she goes on with her lit­er­ary works and oth­er in­tel­lec­tu­al pur­suits.

Film for teach­ing con­jures a ca­reer

"I have pro­duced 11 films," she ad­mits, fur­ther ex­plain­ing that the longest has been 40 min­utes. Her style has been the short doc­u­men­tary and with the suc­cess at­tained from last year's Coolie Pink And Green, it can eas­i­ly be said that Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed is very good at what she does. "Coolie Pink and Green con­tin­ues to trav­el the globe. It was fea­tured at the Zam­bia Film Fes­ti­val, Cannes, Zanz­ibar and In­dia," she says. The pro­fes­sor ex­plained that she ini­tial­ly got in­volved in film, think­ing it would be a good method for teach­ing her stu­dents sub­ject mat­ter at the uni­ver­si­ty. When I start­ed mak­ing films, I made them as par­al­lels to teach­ing," she said, adding, "Af­ter a long ap­pren­tice­ship of learn­ing the craft, I want­ed to ex­per­i­ment with the doc­u­men­tary style." She ex­plained that us­ing film to teach af­ford­ed her the chance to de­vel­op her­self.

Paint­ing and mu­sic co­in­cide

Now, in 2010, Sev­en­teen Colours promis­es to in­ter­est any­one who comes out to see it. "It's 35 min­utes long–just long enough so peo­ple won't get bored," she says. The short film fea­tures two artistes, British born, Caribbean res­i­dent Rex Dixon, who is a painter, along with renowned lo­cal sitar mu­si­cian, Mun­gal Patasar, who wrote orig­i­nal mu­sic for the film. Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed ex­plains that the doc­u­men­tary is about the work of both artistes. She says the film brings both men to­geth­er in a di­a­logue that ex­press­es how their work comes to fruition. "The film brings in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the two artistes, with Mun­gal even cre­at­ing mu­sic for Rex's paint­ings."

Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed, who has al­so au­thored a book en­ti­tled, Imag­ing The Caribbean–Cul­ture and Vi­su­al Trans­la­tion, says par­al­lels were dis­cov­ered in the works of both men, adding that the doc­u­men­tary ex­plores the need for an au­di­ence to get in­volved in their work. "I'm in­ter­est­ed in how peo­ple view art," she ad­mits, fur­ther in­di­cat­ing that artistes are bare­ly recog­nised for their con­tri­bu­tion be­yond gov­ern­men­tal func­tions for which they are of­ten need­ed. Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed ad­mits that her doc­u­men­tary con­cept has been suc­cess­ful­ly at­tempt­ed be­fore by lo­cal film en­thu­si­asts who've pre­sent­ed their work at the TT Film Fes­ti­val, how­ev­er she notes, "it's dif­fer­ent in the sense that it's not bor­ing talk­ing, both artistes cre­ate their work di­rect­ly in front of the cam­era."

She says Dixon paints in front of the lens and Patasar's mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment oc­curs in tan­dem with the cre­ation of the paint­ing.

3 Canal paints the whole world up­side down

Sev­en­teen Colours al­so fea­tures 3 Canal. To­geth­er with Dixon, the trio of the mu­si­cal group paint on can­vas to the melody and rhythm of their well-known J'Ou­vert an­them, Blue. In the end, the paint­ing is sym­bol­i­cal­ly called, Turn The Whole World Up­side Down. "This film is for the lay­man au­di­ence to look and lis­ten. It is al­so for the au­di­ence who is very qual­i­fied in mu­sic and the arts," says the Pro­fes­sor. On Sep­tem­ber 17, Rex Dixon will show­case his work at the Soft Box Gallery in Wood­brook.

Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed says a soft launch of the film is al­so planned. "The film is called Sev­en­teen Colours be­cause Rex's palette com­pris­es 17 colours. "The idea grew in a very or­gan­ic way," says the es­teemed pro­fes­sor. She high­lights that the con­cept came to her af­ter Patasar saw Dixon's work and ex­pressed his de­sire to write mu­sic to the art work. Pro­fes­sor Mo­hammed says her team's aim is to take Sev­en­teen Colours to in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia that show­cas­es art and cul­ture, mak­ing men­tion of PBS and BBC. "We want the film to be seen in places where art and mu­sic can be seen and heard and be­cause I'm al­ways part­nered with some­one, it will al­so broad­en our in­sti­tu­tion­al needs."


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