Fay­ola K J Fras­er

A “coun­try girl at heart,” Asha Lovelace has al­ways un­der­stood the in­trin­sic val­ue of her lived en­vi­ron­ment, draw­ing in­spi­ra­tion from her sur­round­ings. A film­mak­er and the founder/di­rec­tor of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Africa Film Trinidad & To­ba­go (AFTT), she has cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for film­mak­ers to draw from lo­cal in­spi­ra­tion while fos­ter­ing glob­al co­op­er­a­tion and di­a­logue through film.

The AFTT, now in its tenth year, un­der Lovelace’s vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship, has not on­ly show­cased the rich ta­pes­try of T&T’s cin­e­mat­ic land­scape but has al­so em­pha­sised the shared his­to­ries, re­sources, and con­texts of the Glob­al South. AFTT has bridged cul­tur­al and ge­o­graph­i­cal gaps, en­abling film­mak­ers to en­gage with di­verse nar­ra­tives and tech­niques while am­pli­fy­ing the voic­es of T&T film­mak­ers.

Cre­ativ­i­ty was a cen­tral theme in Lovelace’s mem­o­ries of her up­bring­ing. Grow­ing up in the small, rur­al vil­lage of Matu­ra, she ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­ple child­hood, with­out ac­cess to elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter. What some may, in the present day, con­sid­er a hand­i­cap, for Lovelace it was what al­lowed her to tap in­to her deep well of cre­ativ­i­ty, her imag­i­na­tion flour­ish­ing in this en­vi­ron­ment. She re­mem­bers be­ing a child and man­ag­ing her fam­i­ly’s en­ter­tain­ment sched­ule by putting on per­for­mances at night, shows that she would con­struct and di­rect.

“I would do po­et­ry, danc­ing, in­vite my broth­er to do mag­ic, and sing the songs I was learn­ing in the choir. It was a full show, I would charge a 50 cent cov­er fee and dur­ing in­ter­mis­sion, I would serve Crix and cheese,” she re­calls with a laugh.

This up­bring­ing formed the foun­da­tion for Lovelace’s cre­ative de­vel­op­ment. Not on­ly is she from a fam­i­ly of cre­atives in their own right, she was con­stant­ly sur­round­ed by artists and cre­ative peo­ple, who would come to her house to com­mis­er­ate with her par­ents on the week­ends.

Her par­ents were al­so very in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of Best Vil­lage, as her fa­ther, renowned West In­di­an nov­el­ist, play­wright, and short-sto­ry writer Earl Lovelace, wrote the plays for Best Vil­lage in Matu­ra and her moth­er was in­volved in or­gan­is­ing and cos­tum­ing.

Lovelace al­so re­mem­bers fond­ly that she and her broth­ers act­ed in Best Vil­lage. Armed with this sim­ple child­hood, fu­elled by cre­ativ­i­ty, at 11 years old, Lovelace moved to Port-of-Spain with her fam­i­ly.

“Coun­try life pre­pared me,” she mus­es. “I came in­to this new world with a strong ground­ing in who I was, which gave me con­fi­dence to nav­i­gate this new land­scape.” In­deed, by the time Lovelace left school and spent some time in the work­force, she was keen­ly aware and whole­heart­ed­ly con­vinced that her pas­sion lay in film-mak­ing and sought to pur­sue it in her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. She went to Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty in New Jer­sey and grad­u­at­ed with a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Cin­e­ma Stud­ies and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In­spired by the vast­ness and va­ri­ety of cin­e­ma she was ex­posed to dur­ing her de­gree, she felt ready to re­turn to Trinidad and make her movie. “I al­ready knew I want­ed to adapt a lot of my dad’s books. Read­ing them, they are al­ready writ­ten very cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, very vi­su­al­ly, so they lent them­selves nat­u­ral­ly to film.”

Dur­ing her de­gree pro­gramme at Rut­gers, her in­tro­duc­tion to Cuban cin­e­ma was es­pe­cial­ly poignant, mak­ing a dent in her psy­che. When she re­turned home and was walk­ing ca­su­al­ly past the Cuban em­bassy one day, she de­cid­ed to go in­side and ask to work on a film set in Cu­ba. March­ing in­to the em­bassy, Lovelace hap­pened to catch the Am­bas­sador in a free mo­ment, and he in­vit­ed her to tell him her sto­ry. Up­on hear­ing of her pas­sion, he in­sist­ed that she at­tend the Cuban film school, La Es­cuela In­ter­na­cional de Cine y Tele­visión, found­ed by Colom­bian au­thor Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez with the in­tent of en­cour­ag­ing stu­dents from the “ter­cer mun­do” or the de­vel­op­ing world, to pur­sue film-mak­ing.

With the aid of her Span­ish-Eng­lish dic­tio­nary, Lovelace sat the en­trance ex­am, and un­able to re­spond to the ex­treme­ly tech­ni­cal ques­tions, she craft­ed her nar­ra­tive about con­cepts in cin­e­ma and her dreams and de­sires for Caribbean film. To her sur­prise, she was ac­cept­ed to the di­rect­ing class, and de­scribes her two years in Cu­ba as piv­otal to her ca­reer. “It moved me even fur­ther from a North Amer­i­can film per­spec­tive, I was open­ing my­self up to a whole host of new cin­e­mat­ic styles. In Hol­ly­wood, the sto­ry­telling is fast paced, in­tend­ing to keep the au­di­ence hooked.”

But in oth­er styles she found her­self ab­sorbed in the clev­er­ness, quiet­ness and emo­tion­al­i­ty of the sto­ry­telling. Dis­cov­er­ing these var­i­ous styles, Lovelace de­vel­oped the ques­tion that has been the com­pass in her ca­reer in film. “What is the rhythm of our (T&T’s) cin­e­ma?” She be­gan to ex­plore how we could tell our sto­ries in our way, at our own pace, and in­stead of im­i­tat­ing the styles of North Amer­i­ca, how we could seek to de­vel­op our au­then­tic style. In 2002, she re­turned from Cu­ba and be­gan ap­proach­ing cor­po­ra­tions for fund­ing to make her first film, an adap­ta­tion of a short sto­ry by her fa­ther, en­ti­tled Jo­bell and Amer­i­ca.

While can­vass­ing for fund­ing, she re­alised that there was a lack of knowl­edge sur­round­ing films and cin­e­ma, and every en­ti­ty she ap­proached thought film-mak­ing meant huge bud­gets, and large in­vest­ments and no one had an un­der­stand­ing or ap­pre­ci­a­tion for small­er, in­de­pen­dent films. It was at this point she knew that cre­at­ing a film fes­ti­val would de­vel­op “cine-lit­er­a­cy” in the coun­try, not on­ly for the ben­e­fit of au­di­ences but for a wider ap­pre­ci­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing of the broad spec­trum of film.

She set the film fes­ti­val idea aside and con­tin­ued to make her film. “Jo­bell and Amer­i­ca” de­buted in 2004, and copped the award for Best In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­ra­tive Fea­ture Film at the Women’s In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val in Mi­a­mi. Elect­ed as the Re­gion­al Sec­re­tary for the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra for FEPACI-Fed­er­a­tion of Pan African Film­mak­ers in 2013, Lovelace re­turned once again to her bur­geon­ing film fes­ti­val idea.

“There was not much hap­pen­ing in terms of cul­tur­al and film ex­change be­tween Africa and the Caribbean, and I felt that in de­vel­op­ing our film in­dus­try lo­cal­ly, we weren’t ques­tion­ing enough what we want­ed to do with film.”

Merg­ing those two is­sues, she be­lieved that there was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to look to the African con­ti­nent, “where al­though the per­spec­tive is dif­fer­ent, there’s so much fa­mil­iar­i­ty that we can see our­selves in and a lot to learn from and be in­spired by in their film in­dus­try.” Thus, in 2014, AFTT rolled on­to the film scene in its in­au­gur­al year, af­ter ded­i­ca­tion and per­se­ver­ance to sell the idea to po­ten­tial fun­ders.

Now in 2024, ten years af­ter its launch, Lovelace and her team have weath­ered the storm of dis­be­liev­ers and var­i­ous oth­er chal­lenges to build a prod­uct “filled with so much joy.” Lovelace is proud to cel­e­brate this film fes­ti­val as a gift to young film­mak­ers, a plat­form that keeps them mo­ti­vat­ed and in­spires their work. This year AFTT cu­rat­ed a se­lec­tion of cur­rent, top-class films, that are show­ing on the fes­ti­val route, even cur­rent­ly be­ing shown at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. The AFTT al­so boast­ed work­shops and pan­el dis­cus­sions, one of the main ones be­ing “Ex­pe­ri­ence VR: Craft­ing Cin­e­mat­ic Worlds in Vir­tu­al Re­al­i­ty”, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by im­mer­sive sto­ry­teller and di­rec­tor Se­lim Har­bi, who came from Tunisia for AFTT.

For Lovelace, keep­ing the fes­ti­val rel­e­vant and cur­rent, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­cor­po­ra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy is vi­tal in en­sur­ing that T&T’s film­mak­ers don’t get left be­hind. Pour­ing her­self in­to this film fes­ti­val year af­ter year is Lovelace’s love let­ter and lega­cy to the lo­cal and re­gion­al film-mak­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

AFTT is a low-cost, in­clu­sive and di­verse fes­ti­val that caters to peo­ple across gen­er­a­tions and var­i­ous so­cioe­co­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ties and con­texts. Rem­i­nisc­ing on the var­i­ous threads of her life that led to her present vo­ca­tion, she once again ru­mi­nates on her child­hood. As a self de­fined “coun­try girl”, Lovelace has a spe­cial at­trac­tion to deeply root­ed Tri­ni cul­ture, as well as to “reg­u­lar life and sim­ple folks.”

It is this au­di­ence she keeps in mind when craft­ing her projects, en­sur­ing that there is room for every­one in her work. Lovelace ho­n­ours her deep roots as she ex­erts her in­flu­ence in our de­vel­op­ment of a film-mak­ing in­dus­try, in­sist­ing that with in­spi­ra­tion from with­in us and from places and spaces that mir­ror us, we find our own au­then­tic voice in film.