Lecturer: Film critical for Caribbean identity

He was delivering the feature address last Thursday night at the opening of the inaugural World Festival of Emerging Cinema (WOFEC) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Film Programme, Film Unit, St Augustine.

Millington said that for the Caribbean survival in the 21st century depends on new ways of expression rooted in a Caribbean historical experience. He explained that film has the power to create a new society based on justice and equality, and to break mental colonial chains.

“Creative artists will become guardians of a new age,” he added.

To the local film students in attendance Millington said he wants them to compete internationally.

He pointed that the Cave Hill film programme was eightyears- old and was catching up with the St Augustine programme which is celebrating ten years. He also noted that Mona, Jamaica, has now joined the process.

On WOFEC he said festivals like these allow us to gauge our development and create new ways to consume and tell our stories.

He explained that the festival must be viewed in the context of how we see ourselves in the narrative landscape of the future.

Millington stressed through film we can usher in a society that we are so in need of and new ways of seeing and being.

Festival director and UWI Film Programme co-ordinator Yao Ramesar said WOFEC is the showcase event of the 10th anniversary and something he hoped would endure “graciously”. He explained that it is a platform to see films from all over the world, the Caribbean and from Trinidad.

He noted they hope to pair local film students with their international counterparts and do some “matchmaking”.

The festival’s official selection comprises more than 200 films from 52 countries. It includes features from Peru, Columbia, Netherlands, Mexico, France, Albania, Spain, Guinea-Bissau, India and Italy, alongside specially invited films from Trinidad and Tobago and the region.

Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Dr Heather Cateau, in her remarks said the festival is part of the concept of opening new frontiers. She reported the impact of the programme over the last decade has been “phenomenal” and the festival marks a “coming of age” and entering into a second phase of development.

Cateau said with the world economic challenges it is important that through the medium of film the campus and faculty be central as a “global force”. She also stressed that we must put perspectives of artists front and centre. She expressed hope that the festival would become an annual event.

Among those in attendance at the opening was Spanish Ambassador Jos? Mar?a Fern?ndez L?pez de Turiso and Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Trinidad and Tobago, Jules Bijl. The film premiered at the opening was the 2013 drama De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) from the Netherlands which tells the story of the unexpected relationship between a Dutch cleaner and an African asylum seeker.

The festival, which is free, is being held at the Film Unit at Carmody Street, St Augustine, began on May 19 and ends tomorrow.

For the schedule check out the UWI St Augustine Film Programme Facebook page.