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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Monkey Polo makes the big screen

by

20120922

Af­ter three decades of ap­pear­ances in the kids mag­a­zine of the Sun­day Guardian, Mon­key Po­lo comes to life on the big screen at Movi­eTowne in Port-of-Spain, among oth­er films in the T&T Film Fes­ti­val. The fes­ti­val runs un­til Oc­to­ber 2, and Mon­key Po­lo, hav­ing pre­miered yes­ter­day morn­ing, will run again on Sep­tem­ber 30, at 11 am.

Mon­key Po­lo, the seem­ing­ly lov­able scoundrel, who de­fends those in trou­ble with his unique an­tics and cun­ning mind, is one of the well known com­ic he­roes cre­at­ed by Al Ram­sawack; folk­lorist, artist and au­thor of hun­dreds of chil­dren's sto­ries ap­pear­ing in the lo­cal Guardian Kids of the Sun­day Guardian news­pa­per, for the past three decades.

With Ram­sawack's son, Stan­ley Ram­sawack's per­sua­sion and the tech­ni­cal skills of the an­i­ma­tors of Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tion Stu­dios of St Joseph, the draw­ings and sto­ry of this first an­i­mat­ed film was made pos­si­ble. The di­rec­tor, Camille Selvon Abra­ham, was ex­cit­ed to ex­e­cute the project, as "one of Al Ram­sawack's fans from a lit­tle girl who en­joyed his sto­ries." The moral of Mon­key Po­lo is that when you feel you can out­smart some­one, there's al­ways some­one who's smarter than you.

Stan­ley looked back to the day when he was a lit­tle boy and his fa­ther made the first draw­ing of Mon­key Po­lo. He loved it and he nes­tled a dream that one day he would like to see Mon­key Po­lo an­i­mat­ed on TV. To­day he has a big­ger dream of Mon­key Po­lo and Sly Mon­goose shar­ing the big screen with Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions. And lo­cal­ly, he is think­ing of de­sign­ing Mon­key Po­lo and Sly Mon­goose cos­tumes as mas­cots for our T&T crick­et team, com­plete with the na­tion­al flag.

About Al Ram­sawack

Al Ram­sawack, a di­rec­tor of the T&T Film Com­pa­ny, hails from the south­ern vil­lage of Rousil­lac. The fa­ther of two chil­dren, Stan­ley and An­n­marie Sam­sun­dar, he has been writ­ing for the past four decades with the T&T Guardian. His draw­ings and sto­ries have be­come must-read fea­tures in the news­pa­pers, es­pe­cial­ly for chil­dren and the young at heart.

Af­ter all these years, a lit­tle boy still ex­ists in Ram­sawack: "From a child, I loved draw­ing. Liv­ing close to the for­est, I had a fas­ci­na­tion with the an­i­mals I saw there, like the mon­key, snake, mon­goose, al­li­ga­tor, agouti, man­i­cou. "As a lit­tle boy grow­ing up in San­gre Grande, there was a neigh­bour who had a mon­key tied to a tree. I al­ways won­dered what the mon­key would look like, es­pe­cial­ly wear­ing a po­lo shirt."

Ram­sawack did his first il­lus­trat­ed draw­ings in a car­toon style in the '70s. He at­tend­ed San­gre Grande RC School and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, ex­celling in art. Up­on leav­ing school Ram­sawack worked as an art teacher at San Fer­nan­do Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School.

His chil­dren are very sup­port­ive of his work, more­so in his lat­est ven­ture, mak­ing an­i­mat­ed film. Ram­sawack is the ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of his work, while Sam­sun­dar is in­to tech­ni­cal pro­duc­tion, In fact, her doc­u­men­tary-Ce­dros Hosay-was sched­uled for screen­ing at the T&T Film Fes­ti­val yes­ter­day. Ram­sawack was mar­ried for 47 years, un­til the pass­ing of his wife six years ago. Asked about delv­ing in­to writ­ing com­ic books, he ex­pressed re­luc­tance, cit­ing the un­fea­si­bil­i­ty of such a step lo­cal­ly.


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