Zahra Gor­don

For Trinida­di­an film­mak­er/di­rec­tor Karen Mar­tinez, iden­ti­ty is an al­most "in­ex­haustible sub­ject" to which she con­tin­u­al­ly re­turns in her work.

While Mar­tinez, who now lives in the UK, was in T&T re­cent­ly to cast the lead roles for her up­com­ing short film Af­ter Mas, she spoke with the T&T Guardian about grap­pling with iden­ti­ty and much more.

Af­ter Mas was award­ed a pro­duc­tion grant from the T&T Film Co (TTFC) ear­li­er this year. This is the first time Mar­tinez has re­ceived TTFC fund­ing, and the news in Oc­to­ber that the com­pa­ny was go­ing to be dis­solved was shock­ing to her.

Al­though Mar­tinez, 51, has lived in Eng­land for more than 20 years, she was in no way shy about shar­ing her opin­ions on the mat­ter dur­ing a mid­day in­ter­view at the Ho­tel Nor­mandie, St Ann's, Mar­tinez said the TTFC had just be­gun to build an iden­ti­ty and make pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments. Form­ing an over­ar­ch­ing cre­ative in­dus­tries com­pa­ny would negate all of that, she added. Mar­tinez has ex­pe­ri­enced this dis­ap­point­ment be­fore.

"Some­thing that I find that has been en­dem­ic in Trinidad so­ci­ety-and it's not just one po­lit­i­cal par­ty, it's been the same for all par­ties-there's no con­sul­ta­tion, no ac­count­abil­i­ty, no trans­paren­cy."

She feels democ­ra­cy is lack­ing lo­cal­ly. "We want to be a first-world state and we don't act as if that is what we are. Democ­ra­cy is a se­ri­ous thing and it in­volves lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple you rep­re­sent." Be­sides that Mar­tinez be­lieves cap­i­tal­ism "crush­es cre­ativ­i­ty."

But Mar­tinez al­so had a lot of good to say. In fact, home has been a con­stant source of in­for­ma­tion and in­spi­ra­tion for the for­mer Banyan pro­duc­er. "When I think of ideas I tend to think much more of things that have to do with the Caribbean...that's where I'm con­stant­ly drawn back to-Trinidad. That's my strength. That's my iden­ti­ty."

Mar­tinez's pen­chant for tack­ling iden­ti­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly Trinida­di­an iden­ti­ty, is high­light­ed in Af­ter Mas, a 15-minute dra­ma, set dur­ing Car­ni­val, which she de­scribes as an "ar­che­typ­al love sto­ry deal­ing with the con­flict of try­ing to be true to your de­sire when you come from dif­fer­ent back­grounds."

The main char­ac­ters in Af­ter Mas are of two dif­fer­ent races and have to ne­go­ti­ate racial par­a­digms. "I want­ed to talk about race and the fact that race is still an is­sue in Trinidad, al­though we call it a rain­bow na­tion and say that at Car­ni­val every­one is one. It's all love­ly and hope­ful, but there are still re­al is­sues that peo­ple don't con­front."

Al­though she says the work is not au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal, she does draw on per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence. Liv­ing in the UK gave Mar­tinez a fresh per­spec­tive on her own iden­ti­ty. "I feel dif­fer­ent some­times, but it's a dif­fer­ence that I like.

"When I first went across (to Eng­land) and my ac­cent was much stronger peo­ple would ask, 'How come you're not black?' Then there were the times when I'd ap­ply for things like the BBC Eth­nic Mi­nori­ties Pro­gramme and they would tell me I wasn't black enough.

"The dif­fer­ence for me is be­cause I don't look black, I prob­a­bly don't suf­fer the same racism a lot of oth­er peo­ple suf­fer who are def­i­nite­ly black."

Mar­tinez has be­come more crit­i­cal of race is­sues now, but when she di­rect­ed the arts doc­u­men­tary Chut­ney in Yuh So­ca in the 1990s, her at­ti­tude to­wards race was much more op­ti­mistic.

"I tried to show that it was through the mu­sic in Trinidad that the races were ac­tu­al­ly com­ing to­geth­er. The African and In­di­an pop­u­la­tions were com­ing to­geth­er. It was a very hope­ful doc­u­men­tary and de­lib­er­ate­ly so. I was kind of hop­ing that it would be a turn­ing point in pol­i­tics and every­thing else would be­come more about is­sues and less about race and politi­cians ap­peal­ing to eth­nic groups for their votes...I'm sad to see that still to­day that is go­ing on in Trinidad."

Mar­tinez re­turns to T&T in Feb­ru­ary to shoot Af­ter Mas.

Her oth­er works in­clude Kaiso for Ju­ly 27, a doc­u­men­tary filmed a year af­ter the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup; Light Falling on Bam­boo, a short film on the new nov­el by Lawrence Scott of the same ti­tle; and the se­ries Mar­gin­al Voic­es, made for the char­i­ty Odana­di UK, which works with traf­ficked women. Mar­gin­al Voic­es was screened at the 2011 T&T Film Fes­ti­val.

An alum­na of Holy Name Con­vent and the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster, Mar­tinez, who's worked as an ed­i­tor and pro­duc­er now heads the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Ri­poste Pic­tures.

Cur­rent­ly, she is al­so work­ing on the film Dreams in Tran­sit in col­lab­o­ra­tion with po­et Vah­ni Capildeo and com­pos­er Do­minique Le Gen­dre, who are al­so Trindi­a­di­ans liv­ing in the UK. The se­mi-fic­tion­al film fo­cus­es on the im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­sire to re­turn to and the mean­ing of home.

To see more about Karen Mar­tinez's work vis­it her web site www.ri­postepic­tures.co.uk