The launch of Dr Gabrielle Hezeki­ah's first book, Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy's Ma­te­r­i­al Pres­ence: Video, Vi­sion and Ex­pe­ri­ence, was the oc­ca­sion for a gath­er­ing of fam­i­ly, friends and aca­d­e­mics at the Na­tion­al Li­brary (Nalis) in Port-of-Spain on April 16. The book, de­scribed by the au­thor as an ex­plo­ration of phi­los­o­phy and the aes­thet­ics of the mov­ing im­age, fea­tures the video doc­u­men­taries of cel­e­brat­ed lo­cal film­mak­er Yao Rame­sar.

Dr Jean An­toine-Dunne, se­nior lec­tur­er in the De­part­ment of Lib­er­al Arts and the first co­or­di­na­tor of the Film Pro­gramme at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), pre­sent­ed an ex­ten­sive re­view of the book. She de­scribed the work as pi­o­neer­ing and placed it with­in the con­text of both film the­o­ry and the writ­ing of Caribbean thinkers such as Wil­son Har­ris and Derek Wal­cott.

Rame­sar's videos Her­itage: A Wed­ding in Mo­ri­ah, Ma­mi Wa­ta and Jour­ney to Gan­ga Mai were al­so screened and a copy of the book was pre­sent­ed by Dr Hezeki­ah to An­nette Wal­lace, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Nails. Among the guests were Yao Rame­sar, Prof Rho­da Red­dock, Prof Gor­don Rohlehr, pub­lish­er Julie Mor­ton, artist Ken Crichlow and film­mak­er Christo­pher Laird. MC for the event was writer/me­dia pro­duc­er Geor­gia Pop­plewell. Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy's Ma­te­r­i­al Pres­ence will be avail­able next month at The Read­er's Book­shop in St James and at Pa­per Based at the Nor­mandie in St Ann's. It will be avail­able at the UWI Book­shop next se­mes­ter.