Femme du Film
A look at the women at the forefront of Trinidad's emerging film industry

Camille Selvon Abrahams celebrates Caribbean voices

I finally caught up with the award-winning multi-media producer and animator, Camille Selvon Abrahams, the powerhouse behind Animae Caribe: Caribbean Animation Film Festival as she waited for her husband to arrive at Piarco International Airport one rainy afternoon.

Selvon Abrahams admits that animation wasn’t her first career-choice: “Initially when I went to study, I wanted to get into film and video. I liked music videos and thought that I could do something different.”

Notwithstanding, an introductory course at the prestigious Goldsmiths University in London changed the course of her life. She says, “They gave us teasers on different things...film, journalism, video production and animation. It was the first time that I tried animation and it all clicked. I thought, ‘this is what I’m supposed to do.’ I’m an artist first and when I saw my art moving it was phenomenal.”

She went on to complete a BA in Communication, specialising in Animation and graduating first in that discipline. Her final year project, an animated short called Master Peace, won the Royal Television Society Award for that year.

It couldn’t have been easy. Already married, Selvon Abrahams had two children and was carrying her third during her final year at Goldsmiths. She remembers being in the hospital as her classmates graduated. She says, “It was a very challenging time. But one of the reasons I was able to do it was because of the family support...my husband, his mother.”

Today, Selvon Abrahams, now a mother of four, balances family life with two other passions: Animae Caribe and the University of Trinidad and Tobago’s Diploma in Media Studies–Animation. She also has an animation studio, Full Circle Production.

For Selvon Abrahams, each of these interests plays an important role in the development of a viable and thriving animation industry that can, in turn, make positive economic, cultural and social contributions to Caribbean society. She cites India’s multimillion-dollar effort as an example: “If the investment is made in the way it should be, we can employ thousands.”

She notes that Caribbean voices present something unique to a global audience, “Culturally we are making an impact. When I take Caribbean animation to the rest of the world, people are amazed that we’re doing it here. They are in awe of our voices.”

“I was looking for this authentic Caribbean voice,” she continued. “And I made a conscious decision to use it in the film Master Peace and it won an award. Following on the heals of this success was a decision to hold a screening of Caribbean and African films in London: “We only had two submissions...my film and another by Victor Opeyokun.”

The next year, she brought this concept home to Trinidad and Tobago. Today, the five-day festival, jam-packed with workshops, master classes and screenings, accepts submissions from all over the world.

Local support for the festival, which has become a fixture on the annual calendar, is also growing. Selvon Abrahams expressed gratitude for the sponsorship provided by the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company, the Ministry of Trade and eTeck, among others, but noted that Trinidad’s corporate citizenry needs to catch up.

Meanwhile, she plans to continue developing the festival – until she stops. She laughs, “I have an exit strategy. I have six more years to do the job that I do and then I’ll retire...whatever happens after, happens.”

Elspeth Duncan: the multi-media artist

Elspeth Duncan is a bit of an enigma - defying convention and categorisation, particularly when it comes to her art. She says: “I’ve been labelled a multimedia artist because I work in different media: writing; photography; film; and music.”

Her work, usually an amalgamation of those media, can be as difficult to define as she is. Though, there is one belief that pervades every brainchild she has executed—that art can change us. “It doesn’t have to be a transformation of cosmic proportion,” she clarifies. “Greater awareness of self, or a shift in perspective is enough.”

Her work calls for intense self-exploration. “I like to create an experience that is interactive. But no one would have the same experience as you. You learn something about yourself. You open up that creative part of yourself.” That opening up, she claims, is inevitable: “I like to pull people out.”

Duncan has been expressing her creativity since childhood. Her parents, who she says were both creative in their own ways, provided encouragement. “I used to play with boxes...cutting them up, rearranging them, making things out of them. Even then, I’d make up stories and put on plays.”

Duncan remembers her first major production: All of Emily. “There were different incarnations,” she says. “We did it as a play and then, three-quarters of a year later, as a film.” All of Emily was screened at film festivals in Trinidad, Barbados, England, the USA and Canada, and was succeeded by a plethora of other films, music videos, plays, and solo exhibitions. A few of Duncan’s plays were nominated for the Cacique Awards, and one film, No Idea, won the Commonwealth Vision Award in 2004.

“It was cool,” Duncan shrugged, when asked how she felt about winning. “I have a friend who jokes that she’d ask, ‘Elspeth, what did you do yesterday?’ And I’d say, ‘Nothing, I just had tea with the Queen.’”

Challenges are also met with composure. Duncan claims that they simply force her to be innovative. “Money is a challenge,” she says. “But to be honest if I got a whole lot of money, I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it; I’m so used to making things work with very little.”

Like so many Caribbean filmmakers, Duncan plays multiple roles in many of her productions, from scriptwriting to directing and shooting. She remembers receiving funding from the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company for a series of children’s documentaries. But for the most part, she is the executive producer.

She laughs, recalling a friend’s advice to ‘never do something unless you have funding’. “I do everything,” she says. “Funding. Everything. I just do it. If I’d listened, I wouldn’t have done half the things that I have. I have the equipment, so I just do it.”

Currently, Duncan is marketing her new book, Daisy Chain. The book, a collection of fifty-three vignettes about women who are somehow linked to each other, was launched as an e-book last year and has since been converted to print.

She plans to use the book as a launching pad for new projects: “The book is like a little egg and from that egg a film could hatch, a play could hatch...I may take a few of the stories and produce a DVD.”

Duncan’s overall vision informs every decision she makes. “Change. Transformation. To help people realise who they are.”

She laughs, recalling a friend’s advice to ‘never do something unless you have funding’. “I do everything,” she says. “Funding. Everything. I just do it. If I’d listened, I wouldn’t have done half the things that I have. I have the equipment, so I just do it.”

Currently, Duncan is marketing her new book, Daisy Chain. The book, a collection of fifty-three vignettes about women who are somehow linked to each other, was launched as an e-book last year and has since been converted to print.

She plans to use the book as a launching pad for new projects: “The book is like a little egg and from that egg a film could hatch, a play could hatch...I may take a few of the stories and produce a DVD.”

Duncan’s overall vision informs every decision she makes. “Change. Transformation. To help people realise who they are.”

Lorraine O’Connor’s renewed gusto for film

What’s Lorraine O’Connor’s secret? “Yoga,” she says. “It keeps me focused.” This from one of Trinidad’s noted filmmakers, and a woman with loads of responsibility. “It’s not just motherhood (to contend with),” she says. “I’m a wife; I have a home. Then I manage trinidadtunes.com, Riddums Productions...and I’m a doula as well.”

She inadvertently adds ‘yoga instructor’ to the list. She explains that she teaches a class at her daughter’s school, which starts in about thirty minutes. So we delve into her favourite topic: Film.

“I’m really interested in different cultures,” she says. “For my university degree, I studied Mandarin Chinese.” While studying in France, O’Connor returned to Trinidad with a group of French filmmakers who were enthralled by “Trini” culture. She says: “They were inspired to make a film. So we got funding in France and came back and made this film called Calypso Roots.”

While working on the production, O’Connor saw a side of Trinidad that she barely knew. “For me, it was an eye opener, an introduction not only to filmmaking but also to my culture, my country. After that I said, ‘I’m coming back to live’. And I did...three years later.”

Her next project, a film on reggae called L’enfants de Rastafari, carried her to Jamaica. Although the film was never produced due to a lack of funding, O’Connor said that the experience made her realize how much she loved the art form.

“There is something about making a film and seeing the process,” she says. “What I really enjoy is that all these different people come together and put their talent towards this final product.”

Upon returning to Trinidad, O’Connor teamed up with Video Associates to develop a six-part series on pan called Pan Fusion. “They (Video Associates) brought me on board to do the writing for that series. And that was when I established: ‘Okay. This is what I’m doing.’ Especially from the writing side of things.”

Pan Fusion was followed by a documentary on Trinidad and Tobago called Why Settle for Less. The film, commissioned by the Tourism and Industrial Development Company, was produced in three packages: 52 minutes, 15 minutes and 5 minutes.

“We did one for Tobago and another for the Chaguaramas Development Authority...and in that year, all of a sudden, I’m a filmmaker,” she said.

Lorraine’s most recent (major) audio-visual project was Caribbean Young Explorers, a local TV series for children that was aired on CNMG. When the series could not continue due to a lack of funding, O’Connor became despondent. “Since, I’ve worked on foreign productions,” she says. “I have some ideas for films that I’d like to execute but I put my personal projects on hold.”

O’Connor hopes that Trinidad and Tobago Film Company would fund more projects, towards its goal of promoting the national development of film. The company has in fact implemented award schemes whereby film makers can obtain grants, and several initiatives that bring film to various communities.

Nonetheless, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival 2011 has given her a fresh perspective on filmmaking. “My husband and I went to a couple of films at the film festival and we left thinking: ‘Let’s do something.’”

“The technology has evolved so much that you could actually shoot a film without a big crew,” she continued. “My husband is a cameraman; we have a camera...we could go and make a film!”

Louris Lee-Singh: fascinated with theatre

“If someone asked me what defines me,” says Lee-Singh, “I’d say my love for art...but if I were honest, I’d say restlessness.” And Lee-Singh has been restless. Over the years, she has been producer, artistic director, playwright, actor, teacher, scriptwriter, and production manager in a number of ventures spanning both theatre and film. More recently, she donned the hat of president of the National Drama Association of Trinidad and Tobago. She says, “Art presents a lot of opportunities to go in different directions and that satisfies me.”

As a child, Lee-Singh loved stories. “I was always an avid reader,” she said. “I was always into science fiction and fantasy...for me, those books gave me the ability to imagine other ways of being.”

When the Trinidad Theatre Workshop (TTW) performed the Wole Soyinka play, Swamp Dwellers, at her school, Lee-Singh became fascinated with theatre: “Of course, I was in lit(erature) and I’d actually never seen a live play before...I was like: ‘This is what I wanna do!’”She joined the TTW soon after her exams. Her first role was Urmilla, the East Indian housewife in Selvon’s A Brighter Sun. “I played different characters, including Rita, the new next door neighbour, in Selvon’s story. I did that for three years while I studied for A’ levels at St. George’s College.”

After earning a BSc. Psychology at The University of the West Indies, Lee-Singh went to England. “I did a lot of different things there,” she said. “I worked in a mental institution in Hammersmith...and in a dinky little theatre. I travelled around Europe a bit.”

She returned to Trinidad, one year later, to find her bearings. A chance meeting with veteran thespian Albert Laveau on the Promenade in Port-of-Spain led her to apply for an Education Fellowship with Arena Stage, a non-profit theatre based in Southwest Washington, DC.

There, her role as an artist evolved: “I became involved in education and outreach; I learned that theatre, drama, film and all these things have other uses besides entertainment.”

In 2001, she moved to St. Lucia with her husband-to-be, Wayne Lee-Singh. There she met Helen Camps and joined her Toutafé Theatre Company. “We realised that we were very much in sync,” Lee-Singh said of her first meeting with Camps. “She became my mentor and has been for the past eleven years.”

Lee-Singh returned to Trinidad and Tobago, and co-founded The Brown Cotton Theatre Ensemble, along with Camps. She says, “Our thing is empowering people through the dramatic arts. That’s what we do.”

She also re-emerged herself in film. Her talent as an actor, producer, casting director and production manager was put to good use in a number of projects including: Between Friends and Queen of Soca—both of which were funded by the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company—as well as 3Line, The Ghost of Hing King Estate, and Happy Sad.

She’s optimistic about Trinidad and Tobago Film Company’s role in national development: “I’ve worked with the company on numerous occasions...I’ve participated in their workshops. Their work is vital.”

Currently, Lee-Singh is working on two film projects: Rastaman Iration, a short film about a deportee who opens up a parlour; and Licks, an exploration of the Caribbean perspective on corporal punishment.

‘Femme du Film' is brought to you by the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company (TTFC) Ltd. – the state agency responsible for the development of the local film (audio-visual) sector. Anyone offering professional services which are applicable to the Film Industry may register for the TTFC’s Production Directory. For more information on this and other TTFC programmes write us at info@trinidadandtobagofilm.com or call (868) 625 FILM (3456).”