DAVID CUFFY

In com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day, four ap­pro­pri­ate­ly-themed films in the Filme Caribe se­ries were shown at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre, White Street, Wood­brook, on Wednes­day evening. Filme Caribe is a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty screen­ings of Trinidad and To­ba­go and re­gion­al films host­ed by the Trinidad & To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Lit­tle Carib The­atre that seeks to in­crease the aware­ness of and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for these pro­duc­tions while at the same time de­vel­op­ing a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mod­el for film pro­duc­ers.

Pa­trons viewed two se­lec­tions from a se­ries by Dr Pat Mo­hammed ti­tled A Dif­fer­ent Imag­i­na­tion. They were Coolie Pink and Green, and 17 Colours And A Sitar. In ad­di­tion they were treat­ed to The Gan­ga Dashara, a doc­u­men­tary by Al Ram­sawak, and Ma­li­ni, writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Er­rol Sita­hal.

Coolie Pink and Green, which made lib­er­al use of chut­ney mu­sic and dance se­quences by the Shiv Shak­ti Dancers, is the sto­ry of a young Hin­du woman learn­ing and ap­pre­ci­at­ing the beau­ty of the cul­ture that is unique­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go's even as a com­mu­ni­ty el­der's at­tempts to hold her to prac­tic­ing the an­cient cul­ture of her an­ces­tors.

While the girl is sym­pa­thet­ic to the el­der's views, she is al­ready in­flu­enced by this coun­try's cul­ture, but re­alis­es she can cel­e­brate both. The fi­nal scene fea­tures a cel­e­bra­to­ry In­di­an dance to the mu­sic of for­mer Groovy So­ca Monarch Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter's Don't Stop. British-born painter Rex Dixon and sitarist Mun­gal Patasar are the prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters in 17 Colours And A Sitar, a well-craft­ed film that ex­plores mu­si­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tions of colour and vi­su­al im­agery.

Both men dis­cov­er the com­mon threads in their work, as they speak of the in­spi­ra­tion from which comes their ex­per­i­men­tal ways of work­ing in their re­spec­tive ar­eas of ex­per­tise. Adding their tal­ents to the over­all ef­fort is rap­so group 3 Canal. It was an­nounced that Dixon, who has been liv­ing in the Caribbean for 25 years, was cel­e­brat­ing his 73rd birth­day on the oc­ca­sion.

The Gan­ga Dashara is an an­cient Hin­du Riv­er Fes­ti­val that orig­i­nat­ed in In­dia thou­sands of years ago. Ac­cord­ing to folk­lorist Al Ram­sawak, di­rec­tor of the doc­u­men­tary film, the clus­ters of year­ly cel­e­bra­tion that used to take place in rur­al vil­lages in Trinidad and To­ba­go have since died out. Hin­du schol­ar Ravi Ji ap­peared in the film to ex­plain as­pects and tra­di­tions of the fes­ti­val, shot in 2002 at the Mar­i­anne Riv­er in Blan­chisseuse.

Ma­li­ni tells the sto­ry of a man who re­turns from Cana­da to vis­it his home in Lengua. It is writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Er­rol Sita­hal who ex­plained that the film was a com­mu­ni­ty ef­fort that tried to fea­ture the lan­guage of the peo­ple in the hope that it would evoke cre­ative re­spons­es from those who viewed it.

Ex­pe­ri­enced ac­tor Ken Bood­hu gives a sen­si­tive per­for­mance of the main char­ac­ter Sat who on his vis­it home fan­ta­sis­es his dead sis­ter Ma­li­ni be­ing alive as a care­giv­er for his ail­ing fa­ther. Af­ter each screen­ing, ques­tions from mem­bers of the au­di­ence were an­swered by the four pro­duc­ers.