Gayelle founders Tony Hall, Christo­pher Laird and Bruce Padding­ton will be among those ho­n­oured by the T&T Film Fes­ti­val (ttff) as "pi­o­neers of film."It will the first time the fes­ti­val will ho­n­our con­tem­po­rary pi­o­neers, most of them still in­volved in the in­dus­try: Hall con­tin­ues to write scripts, Laird is chair­man of the T&T Film Co (TTFC) and Padding­ton is the founder and di­rec­tor of the ttff. The awardees will be fet­ed at a lun­cheon on Fri­day.The eight-year-old fes­ti­val had pre­vi­ous­ly looked at lega­cy works and ear­ly T&T film­mak­ers through an ex­hi­bi­tion of pho­tos, clips, equip­ment and posters.The oth­er pi­o­neers to be ho­n­oured in­clude Car­la Foder­ing­ham, CEO of the TTFC, and Frances-Anne Solomon, founder of the Caribbean­Tales Film Fes­ti­val in Cana­da, and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller.

The TTFF, which of­fi­cial­ly be­gins on Sep­tem­ber 17 and runs un­til Oc­to­ber 1, will for the first time al­so fea­ture a pack­age of mu­sic videos, in­clud­ing those from the artist I-Sasha and the bands Mun­gal Patasar & Pan­tar and Gyazette.In ac­knowl­edge­ment of the in­creas­ing num­ber of women film­mak­ers in the re­gion–47 con­tri­bu­tions this year were made by women–the fes­ti­val will have a seg­ment called Women in Film. In ad­di­tion to film screen­ings, this seg­ment will in­volve Q&A ses­sions and pan­el dis­cus­sions about the top­ic.This year, for the first time, the fes­ti­val will present films in two dis­tinct sec­tions: Caribbean films, pro­duced by peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing in the Caribbean or Caribbean peo­ple abroad, and "her­itage" films, pro­duced in the coun­tries of the an­ces­tors of Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans. The sec­ond cat­e­go­ry will in­clude films from In­dia, Africa and Eu­rope. Chi­nese films will al­so be shown for the first time.

Ac­claimed Ghana­ian/British film­mak­er John Akom­frah will at­tend the fes­ti­val, which will present a ret­ro­spec­tive of his work.The films from T&T film­mak­ers that will make their de­but at the fes­ti­val in­clude God Loves a Fight­er, di­rect­ed by Dami­an Mar­cano; For­ward Ever: The Killing of A Rev­o­lu­tion, by Bruce Padding­ton; and Ten Days of Muhar­ram: The Ce­dro Hosay, by Ernest Che Ro­driguez.The T&T Film Fes­ti­val will fea­ture 142 films this year. The num­ber is up con­sid­er­ably from when it be­gan in 2006, when it fea­tured 35 films.For the screen­ing sched­ule, venues and oth­er in­for­ma­tion, go to ttfilm­fes­ti­val.com–Er­line An­drews