Zahra Gor­don

Win­ning the 2015 T&T Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val was a sur­prise to Ayesha Jor­dan. Her first place en­try, Good Ole Days, was not her first stab at the com­pe­ti­tion. Jor­dan, 33, al­so sub­mit­ted to the 2014 cy­cle, but was un­suc­cess­ful. The loss was not dis­cour­ag­ing for the Ma­yaro-born-and-bred film­mak­er and moth­er, how­ev­er. In fact, los­ing pushed her to work even hard­er at the craft.

"I make films be­cause it's a cre­ative chal­lenge and com­pe­ti­tions and fes­ti­vals are a way for me to con­tin­u­ous­ly push my­self to cre­ate bet­ter work," said Jor­dan dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view at Ma­yaro Ca­ble TV (MCTV) where she is a mul­ti­me­dia spe­cial­ist.

In ad­di­tion to a cash award, new mo­bile de­vices, a tro­phy and train­ing work­shop, Jor­dan's prize in­cludes sub­mis­sion of her film in­to the Toron­to Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val–one of the largest fes­ti­vals of this kind in the world. The in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure is a par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­cit­ing part of the win, ac­cord­ing to Jor­dan, who has been qui­et­ly gain­ing ac­co­lades and hon­ing her skills not on­ly as a di­rec­tor but al­so as an ac­tress, artist and writer for the past eight years.

Jor­dan has stud­ied pho­tog­ra­phy and film at UWI Open Cam­pus and the Dig­i­tal Film In­sti­tute. Her shorts have been screened twice at the T&T Film Fes­ti­val. She has al­so stud­ied act­ing and script writ­ing with Tony Hall and par­tic­i­pat­ed in di­rect­ing work­shops with Chris Brown­ie.

In Good Ole Days, Jor­dan tells the sto­ry of a past gen­er­a­tion of Trinida­di­an lifestyle. The film is a flash­back as a grand­moth­er an­swers her grand­daugh­ter's ques­tions about child­hood. Jor­dan plays the grand­moth­er and the moth­er in the past, while her three chil­dren ex­pert­ly take up nu­mer­ous roles as the grand­daugh­ter and young grand­moth­er.

"The film came from my rem­i­nisc­ing about grow­ing up and the way we've lost our val­ue sys­tems and dis­ci­pline (in Trinidad)," said Jor­dan who ex­plained that she had many re­spon­si­bil­i­ties grow­ing up, such as tend­ing to goats be­fore school. She said many as­pects of the lifestyle de­pict­ed in the film are still alive in Ma­yaro, but seem to be slow­ly fad­ing away.

"In the coun­try­side, we still go out­side to cook some­times and the fruit trees are al­ways there for us to pick from; in the vil­lage every­body looks out for one an­oth­er, but a lot of chil­dren are re­al­ly wrapped up in tech­nol­o­gy. They're not tak­ing time to ob­serve their en­vi­ron­ment or get to know peo­ple prop­er­ly."

Dis­ci­pline is a ma­jor theme in the film and al­so a way of life for Jor­dan. To com­plete her en­try, Jor­dan had to bal­ance work, fam­i­ly and film­ing–a ro­ta­tion to which she has be­come ex­treme­ly ac­cus­tomed.

"In or­der to keep my­self in­spired, I know that I have to do things out­side of work. So I have to make time to do things that I'm re­al­ly pas­sion­ate about. When I get home I make sure to get in­to my per­son­al zone and cre­ate. I have a lot of late nights af­ter I set­tle my chil­dren when it's me time–usu­al­ly some­time be­tween 10 pm and 4 am–I'm up late writ­ing and edit­ing."

Good Ole Days took ap­prox­i­mate­ly one week to com­plete us­ing a fourth Gen­er­a­tion iPod Touch on a $400 bud­get. Jor­dan built a spe­cial stand for the iPod to as­sist with shoot­ing, but the de­vice fell so many times dur­ing pro­duc­tion that the screen even­tu­al­ly shat­tered. In ad­di­tion to cam­er­a­work, Jor­dan al­so wrote the script and did her own voiceovers and edit­ing us­ing Adobe Pre­mier Pro. And if that wasn't enough, Jor­dan al­so drew folk­lore char­ac­ters which were used as stills in the film.

The judges de­scribed Good Ole Days as "unique and cre­ative" adding that the sto­ry was well told and the ac­tors "ex­celled in per­for­mance," ac­cord­ing to FilmTT, the fes­ti­val ad­min­is­tra­tors. This year's pan­el of judges com­prised of Christo­pher An­tho­ny Din Chong, Son­ja Du­mas, Man­disa Pan­tin and Mar­vin Ish­mael.

Al­though en­tries in­to this year's fes­ti­val de­creased by about 13 per cent, FilmTT gen­er­al man­ag­er Jamil Agard be­lieves the fes­ti­val is an in­cu­ba­tor for qual­i­ty lo­cal con­tent. At the Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val award cer­e­mo­ny, he said, "The 25 (en­tries) that we re­ceived this year il­lus­trate the con­tin­ued pop­u­lar­i­ty of this ini­tia­tive. In fact, I ex­pect that many of the first-timers in this year's Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val will be among those who will crew the next wave of T&T based pro­duc­tions."

And Agard may have a good point. Last year's first and sec­ond place win­ners, Robert Eve­lyn and Rish­ma Han­sil re­spec­tive­ly, have been able to use their wins to help pro­pel their ca­reers. Eve­lyn di­rect­ed the re­cent­ly re­leased lo­cal dra­ma, The Apart­ment, and Han­sil is cur­rent­ly in the UK earn­ing a Mas­ter's de­gree in me­dia and film.

So what's next for Jor­dan? She plans to con­tin­ue writ­ing and study­ing in prepa­ra­tion for a fea­ture film. The fes­ti­val vic­to­ry has helped her to seal her iden­ti­ty as a film­mak­er and con­nect all her cre­ative en­er­gies. "I've on­ly re­cent­ly start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing my­self as a film­mak­er be­cause of the ex­po­sure and in­ter­est in my work. Peo­ple are ac­tu­al­ly ask­ing about my oth­er projects. Now, every tal­ent that I have is ty­ing in­to my film­mak­ing and I'm learn­ing how to put it all to­geth­er."

To keep up with Jor­dan and view some of her short films, like her Face­book page: Ayesha Jor­dan Pro­duc­tions.