The high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed dance film The Or­isha Suite will be among the first of the films to pre­miere to­day at Movi­eTowne in Port-of-Spain in the T&T Film Fes­ti­val line-up.In­spired by the works of crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed Trinida­di­an na­tive chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bakari S Lind­say of Col­lec­tive of Black Artists (CO­BA), Nicole Brooks com­bined forces to shoot her first dance film, an ex­cerpt of Lind­say's the­atri­cal dance pro­duc­tion Danse Bele. The Or­isha Suite was fund­ed by The Cana­di­an Arts Coun­cil for the Arts, On­tario Arts Coun­cil of the Arts and Bra­vo!FACT."Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, we tried our best to film on the ocean shores of Trinidad and ho­n­our the an­ces­tors by film­ing on their land. How­ev­er, funds could not ac­com­mo­date this de­sire. Nev­er­the­less, I'm thrilled to have been able to com­plete this work and for it to have it's home­com­ing at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val, to have its world pre­miere here is a dream come true," said Brooks.

About the film-mak­er

Nicole Brooks has made a sig­nif­i­cant, no holds barred mark by blend­ing her abil­i­ties in the Cana­di­an film, tele­vi­sion and per­form­ing arts scenes daz­zling au­di­ences as film­mak­er, di­rec­tor, ac­tress, play­wright, teacher and "art-ivis.'Her pro­duc­ing and di­rect­ing cred­its on both stage and screen have cul­mi­nat­ed in mas­ter­works in­clud­ing the crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed doc­u­men­tary A Linc in Time, docu-se­ries Echo, and mu­sic doc­u­men­tary The Sis­tahs Con­cert.She is cur­rent­ly work­shop­ping her first mu­si­cal en­ti­tled Obeah Opera, sched­uled to stage as a full scale pro­duc­tion in spring 2012, and is in the de­vel­op­ment of her high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary Find­ing Sa­lome on the life the leg­endary award win­ning jazz singer Sa­lome Bey.

About the film

The Or­isha Suite cel­e­brates the rit­u­als of en­slaved Africans, who, af­ter be­ing stolen from their home­land and forced in­to slav­ery by colo­nial mas­ters, were able to pre­serve their her­itage and iden­ti­ty through song and dance cer­e­monies.The sto­ry is nar­rat­ed by a lit­tle boy who ob­serves mem­bers of his slave com­mu­ni­ty, one late night, in Sun­day wor­ship by the ocean shore. Through the young boy, the view­er is giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence the awe-in­spir­ing ser­vice by the slaves, which demon­strates the sol­i­dar­i­ty for their an­ces­tors and for the Or­ishas (revered deities in the Yoru­ba re­li­gion).