Gillian Moore

In choos­ing movies to screen at the gala open­ing of this year's Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val, the or­gan­is­ers did well. The films, Rain and Queen of the Brands, rep­re­sent­ed two sides of the spec­trum of Caribbean cin­e­ma, re­flect­ing the what is pos­i­tive in the in­dus­try and of­fer­ing a glimpse of the fu­ture. Rain, di­rect­ed by Ba­hami­an film-mak­er Maria Go­v­an, is a film that tells the sto­ry of a young Caribbean girl who must try to rise above fam­i­ly trou­bles and en­vi­ron­men­tal lim­i­ta­tions to cre­ate a vi­able fu­ture. It's a qui­et movie, with a fa­mil­iar sto­ry­line. But it is un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly Caribbean, with im­ages and themes that can be uni­ver­sal­ly un­der­stood across the re­gion and be­yond.

Rain is a Caribbean teenag­er who must leave be­hind her rur­al sea­side home when her grand­moth­er dies, to live in the dark, rough ur­ban world of her es­tranged moth­er. She has strong sup­port around her, de­spite the chal­lenges and de­pri­va­tions she faces. But ul­ti­mate­ly, she must look with­in to find her own gifts and her own way for­ward. The film is cred­i­ble, raw and re­al, with strong act­ing per­for­mances and good pac­ing and di­rec­tion. Its heart­warm­ing tale went down well with the au­di­ence at the Movi­eTowne screen­ing, even as it was ev­i­dent that Rain is some­what above the gen­er­al stan­dard of lo­cal films. Queen of the Brands was se­lect­ed from among this year's en­tries by stu­dents of the Film Pro­gramme of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in St Au­gus­tine.

Writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Thomas Jem­mer­son, the five-minute short is a trip­py treat­ment of the top­ic of con­sumerism. It presents a young woman who is ob­sessed with ob­tain­ing the lat­est "brands," as pre­scribed by pop cul­ture and me­dia. A pair of trendy shades re­veal to her more than she bar­gained for. The film em­ploys the use of many frames per sec­ond in mak­ing its point, us­ing the tech­nique to al­ter time, space and re­al­i­ty. The movie's look and lan­guage re­flect youth cul­ture on its own terms. It points to a fu­ture, in terms of T&T and Caribbean films, that is open to ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and will­ing to step away from es­tab­lished norms in cre­at­ing its own voice. The fes­ti­val will screen more than 60 Caribbean di­as­po­ra films, in­clud­ing some 30 lo­cal films. It of­fers a re­al treat for cin­e­ma buffs and an op­por­tu­ni­ty we rarely have: the chance to see our­selves.

More in­fo

Fur­ther screen­ings of Rain:

Sep­tem­ber 26 - 1 pm at Movi­eTowne

Sep­tem­ber 29 - 8 pm at Movi­eTowne To­ba­go

Fur­ther screen­ings of Queen of the Brands:

Sep­tem­ber 25 - UWI Car­mody Road

Sep­tem­ber 26 - at Movi­eTowne

Sep­tem­ber 29 - at Movi­eTowne To­ba­go

For in­for­ma­tion on the fes­ti­val, films and film-mak­ers, check the TTFF Web site at

http://www.trinidadand­to­bagofilm­fes­ti­val.com/de­fault.asp.