View­ers have un­til Ju­ly 23 to watch T&T film­mak­er Mariel Brown's short doc­u­men­tary Small­man on the US Na­tion­al Black Pro­gram­ming Con­sor­tium (NBPC) Web se­ries AfroPoP: the Ul­ti­mate Cul­tur­al Ex­change: Caribbean Shorts.Small­man was one of four Caribbean films cu­rat­ed for the Caribbean Shorts se­ries. The film's Web site de­scribes it thus­ly: "Small­man is Richard Mark Rawl­ins' per­son­al ex­plo­ration of the re­al and imag­ined worlds that his fa­ther, Ken­wyn, made in the work­shop be­neath their house." The ten-minute short is based on Rawl­ins's e-book about his fa­ther."Short films from all across the Caribbean Basin are fea­tured in this se­ries," says a note on the AfroPoP page. "Dra­mat­ic, fun­ny and in­sight­ful shorts and doc­u­men­taries made by Caribbean film­mak­ers, cel­e­brat­ing and ex­plor­ing a di­verse set of iden­ti­ties. "These shorts ex­plore im­mi­gra­tion, life op­por­tu­ni­ties, mod­ern Caribbean iden­ti­ty and much, much more."The se­ries, which ran through the month of June, cel­e­brat­ed Caribbean Her­itage Month, an an­nu­al ob­ser­vance in the US.Brown said in an e-mail mes­sage, "One of the rea­sons that I am so en­cour­aged by AfroPoP's sup­port of Small­man is that it will ex­pose the film to an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent au­di­ence in North Amer­i­ca."

Small­man had its world­wide pre­miere at the 2013 T&T Film Fes­ti­val. Leslie Fields-Cruz, di­rec­tor of pro­gram­ming at NBPC, was in Trinidad for the fes­ti­val. Brown quotes her on the Small­man Web page:"In 2012 I was in­vit­ed to serve on the T&T Film Fes­ti­val's doc­u­men­tary film ju­ry. It was my first time trav­el­ling to Trinidad, so I was ex­cit­ed about vis­it­ing the is­land. But more im­por­tant­ly, I was ex­cit­ed about watch­ing films from the Caribbean, most of which were made by Caribbean film­mak­ers. "I re­turned in 2013 to serve on a pan­el for a Un­esco con­fer­ence, De­vel­op­ing the Caribbean Film In­dus­try for a Cul­ture of Peace. I sat in a room with sev­er­al oth­er Caribbean film­mak­ers who talked can­did­ly about the unique chal­lenges of mak­ing films and dis­trib­ut­ing those films in the Caribbean and abroad."Much of what I heard was sim­i­lar to the chal­lenges in­de­pen­dent me­dia mak­ers face in the US: rais­ing fi­nance, small bud­gets, find­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion, find­ing an au­di­ence; but pro­duc­ing in the Caribbean is ham­pered by the lack of a strong me­dia mak­ing in­fra­struc­ture. But there is good news. Things are chang­ing, con­tent is be­ing made and dis­trib­uted more of­ten, and it's find­ing au­di­ence both in the Caribbean, the US and abroad."

Brown said, "As film­mak­ers, I think we all want our work to have a life out there in the world and to be seen by peo­ple. AfroPop is a won­der­ful way to give Small­man wings, and I am re­al­ly hap­py to be shar­ing it."Al­so be­ing shown on­line in the se­ries are Bar­ba­di­ans Lisa Hare­wood's and Ma­hara­ki's dra­mat­ic shorts Aun­tie and Vivre, re­spec­tive­ly, and Ba­hami­an Ka­reem Mor­timer's dra­mat­ic short Pas­sage.