Fay­ola Fras­er

“We have a trea­sure chest of art and tal­ent…When I think of T&T, the over­ar­ch­ing theme is cre­ativ­i­ty and fes­tiv­i­ty. I want to cre­ate en­ter­tain­ing films that ed­u­cate us about us, so it’s not a task to get ex­cit­ed about our­selves.”

Film di­rec­tor, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, archivist and ed­u­ca­tor, Shari Pet­ti, is on a per­pet­u­al jour­ney to cre­ate art that ex­plores Trin­bag­on­ian her­itage, iden­ti­ty and cul­ture. Mas + Movies, open­ing from Jan­u­ary 29, is her lat­est cre­ation, a “cu­rat­ed Car­ni­val film ex­pe­ri­ence” blend­ing var­i­ous as­pects of Car­ni­val’s film, mu­sic and his­to­ry for peo­ple who “care about Car­ni­val be­yond the road.” This pro­duc­tion is yet an­oth­er notch on Pet­ti’s belt, as her rel­a­tive­ly young ca­reer has al­ready been marked by awards and ac­co­lades, and char­ac­terised by a fear­less com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing cul­tur­al mem­o­ry and fram­ing how T&T’s cul­ture is doc­u­ment­ed, dis­cussed and un­der­stood.

Born and raised in Mor­vant, Pet­ti, 29, was drawn to per­for­mance from an ear­ly age, par­tic­i­pat­ing in ac­tiv­i­ties such as choral speak­ing, the­atre, and choir dur­ing pri­ma­ry school. Up­on at­tend­ing sec­ondary school at Bish­op Anstey High, her cre­ativ­i­ty both in and out of school blos­somed. She be­came heav­i­ly in­volved in the­atre via Trinidad The­atre Work­shop’s class­es and the dra­ma com­pa­ny Dra­ma Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence, bet­ter known as “D Mad”. Post-sec­ondary school, while still a teenag­er, she land­ed an act­ing role as an ex­tra on the film “Bazodee”, and, ever-cu­ri­ous, she asked to vol­un­teer be­hind the scenes in the pro­duc­tion of the film. On her sec­ond day vol­un­teer­ing on set, her su­per­vi­sor sug­gest­ed she pur­sue film at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Pet­ti, at the time plan­ning to study ge­og­ra­phy, im­me­di­ate­ly piv­ot­ed, and from that mo­ment on­ward, nev­er looked back.

Through­out her time at UWI, Pet­ti “didn’t treat as­sign­ments as just an as­sign­ment”, tak­ing her work far out­side the class­room, post­ing it on so­cial me­dia pages, Youtube and sub­mit­ting films to fes­ti­vals. In 2017-2018, her sec­ond year in uni­ver­si­ty, she made a wide­ly ac­claimed doc­u­men­tary called “Sorf Hair”, ex­plor­ing the nat­ur­al hair ex­pe­ri­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go for peo­ple with kinky/curly hair. “Sorf Hair” was nom­i­nat­ed in the Best Doc­u­men­tary Short Cat­e­go­ry for the Pan African Award Fes­ti­val and was award­ed the Peo­ple’s Choice Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val. Her ex­pe­ri­ences in film dur­ing her time at UWI were for­ma­tive and pro­duc­tive, and now Pet­ti teach­es part-time at UWI, “feel­ing like I’ve come full cir­cle, and hap­py to be back in the space that helped me fig­ure out my voice.”

She went on to spend a few years af­ter uni­ver­si­ty de­vel­op­ing work, com­ing up with her idea for “Mas Prep”, a do­cuseries on the mak­ing of tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters. Not long af­ter, Pet­ti was award­ed a Ful­bright Schol­ar­ship and went to Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty, where she did her Mas­ter’s in Fine Arts in Cin­e­matog­ra­phy. “I feel like I got a thor­ough, prac­ti­cal film ed­u­ca­tion there,” she re­flects, “the pro­fes­sors were bril­liant, and it was an in­tense con­ser­va­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment.”

At the end of 2022, she re­turned home, in­vig­o­rat­ed, ready to pour in­to her com­pa­ny, Scene Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed. Re­ceiv­ing fund­ing to make a full sea­son of her do­cuseries “Mas Prep”, she made six episodes filmed most­ly in T&T but al­so in Lon­don. She al­so re­leased her film “Fan­tas­tic Fri­day”, which fo­cused on the ex­pe­ri­ence of Car­ni­val in the sto­ry of friend­ship, and was screened in Lon­don, Cana­da and across the Caribbean.

In ad­di­tion to film, Pet­ti is deeply in­vest­ed in archiv­ing and ed­u­ca­tion, de­scrib­ing much of her work as in­ten­tion­al­ly ed­u­ca­tion­al - though nev­er dry. Ear­ly on, she ques­tioned who would care about cul­tur­al doc­u­men­ta­tion or dis­miss it as bor­ing, prompt­ing her de­sire to cre­ate what she calls “en­ter­tain­ing ed­u­ca­tion.” While some projects are made pure­ly for her­self, as a means of sat­is­fy­ing her own cu­rios­i­ty about things, many are shared pub­licly, ful­fill­ing her com­mit­ment to in­form­ing and ed­u­cat­ing oth­ers. For ex­am­ple, in 2025, a res­i­den­cy in Mar­tinique al­lowed her to hike the is­land’s vol­cano, ful­fill­ing a long-held in­ter­est in un­der­stand­ing the phys­i­cal for­ma­tion of the Caribbean, an in­ter­est that has tak­en her across sev­er­al vol­canic is­lands in the re­gion.

For Pet­ti, ac­co­lades and fel­low­ships are less about pres­tige and more about re­ceiv­ing feed­back from cre­atives whose work she deeply re­spects. In 2024, she spent May to De­cem­ber in a fel­low­ship with Third Hori­zon de­vel­op­ing a project fur­ther, an ex­pe­ri­ence that led to meet­ing her even­tu­al co-pro­duc­er, while en­gage­ments with Caribbean­Tales, in­clud­ing a con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos, of­fered crit­i­cal guid­ance on re­fin­ing her work. Res­i­den­cies at Ox­ford Brookes Uni­ver­si­ty and Stu­dio Lu­mière in Mar­tinique proved equal­ly for­ma­tive, al­low­ing her to de­vel­op her work, re­ceive rig­or­ous feed­back, and test her ideas with new au­di­ences. Her work took her from Mar­tinique to Paris and Lon­don, cul­mi­nat­ing in a screen­ing at South Lon­don Gallery, home to one of the world’s largest Pan-African archives. For Pet­ti, pre­sent­ing as an in­de­pen­dent film­mak­er on that scale, en­gag­ing au­di­ences across con­ti­nents, and learn­ing how Caribbean cul­ture res­onates with­in di­as­poric spaces marked a sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al win.

Notwith­stand­ing her im­pres­sive ac­co­lades thus far in the film in­dus­try, Pet­ti re­mains hum­ble, pas­sion­ate, and dri­ven, not sole­ly mak­ing films, but un­leash­ing her cre­ative vi­sions and pour­ing in­to the Caribbean cre­ative in­dus­try. “I’m tru­ly a side-questy per­son,” she laughs, “I’m at­tract­ed to cre­ativ­i­ty, and al­though film is my main medi­um right now, that might change. I’m al­ways look­ing for ways to not be re­strict­ed and do what I love.” Ac­knowl­edg­ing that there is a dearth of op­por­tu­ni­ties in the cre­ative in­dus­try, she is ded­i­cat­ed to show­cas­ing the wealth of lo­cal tal­ent by of­fer­ing ac­tors, pro­duc­ers, writ­ers and oth­er cre­atives op­por­tu­ni­ties to be part of her films. For those who are dis­cour­aged by the lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties in these in­dus­tries, she says that it is a chal­lenge, “but fol­low your in­stincts in where you should be putting your time and en­er­gy. This is a life­long pur­suit, it comes with chal­lenges that I still face, but the oth­er op­tion is not ho­n­our­ing the part of your­self that craves cre­ative pur­suits.’

With Mas + Movies, Pet­ti is con­tin­u­ing that work of ho­n­our­ing her love for film, ed­u­ca­tion, and cul­ture, call­ing on au­di­ences to show up not just for the spec­ta­cle, but for the cul­ture. “We went all out for al­lyuh,” she says, point­ing to the rich­ness of Trin­bag­on­ian tal­ent on dis­play, in the world pre­miere of the pi­lot episode of her se­ries “Just Iere” fea­tur­ing Yung Bred­da and Jr Lee. Ex­cit­ed to see the char­ac­ters come ful­ly to life, Pet­ti hopes Trin­bag­o­ni­ans will re­turn week af­ter week, sup­port­ing a grow­ing film ecosys­tem that cre­ates re­al em­ploy­ment for ac­tors and crew alike. “This is Car­ni­val be­yond fetes,” she says, “it’s al­so a way to sup­port lo­cal tal­ent, learn more about the cul­tur­al char­ac­ters, and the crafts­man­ship and labour that go in­to mak­ing mas.”

Dri­ven by a de­sire to push the cul­ture for­ward, Pet­ti’s work stands as both preser­va­tion and provo­ca­tion, urg­ing Caribbean sto­ries to move, trav­el and en­dure.

Mas + Movies opens Jan­u­ary 29 in Movi­eTowne Port-of-Spain with tick­ets avail­able on Is­land e-Tick­ets.