Mayaro Soucouyant Legend

Lionel, an old ‘village ram’, reflects on his youth and his romance with Matilda, a powerful Mayaro soucouyant. He coaxes her and her friend Loretta to take part in a flying competition to see which of them could fly to England and steal a gold spoon from Queen Victoria’s Royal cutlery. In doing so, he accidentally triggers Loretta’s death for she lands only in Tobago, sucks a cow and upon returning to Mayaro, suffers an epileptic attack which leaves her, at daybreak, exposed and without her skin, on the public water tank. Soucouyant beaters discover her at dawn and although she tries to escape by several transformations into animals, she is beaten to death when she changes into a snake and is tossed into a pot of boiling pitch.

Meanwhile, her more powerful soucouyant friend Matilda returns to Mayaro with the gold spoon that she claims to have stolen from Queen Victoria’s Royal cutlery. This diamond-studded gold spoon ignites Lionel’s greed and he plots to steal it from her. Using his charm and his wit, he wields the only weapon mastered by every ‘village ram’ - but with this final demonstration of his virility, he finds himself in even deeper trouble than he could have ever imagined! Hounded by his past and his guilt, death eludes a tormented Lionel who eagerly awaits it. He thinks his only salvation is to reveal his betrayal of his soucouyant lover.

Suck Meh Soucouyant Suck Meh is a rousing, Caribbean vampire movie narrated in the colloquial Trinidadian language and based on one of the Caribbean’s mythological creatures, intertwines calypsos with chants, juxtaposes live-action with smooth animation and restores folktales to folks in a modern palatable form that is compellingly visual and profoundly enlightening.

A natural Craft

The republic of Trinidad & Tobago in the southern Caribbean, has a rich history of culture, particularly in its music and in its Carnival art. Yet the most unusual blossoming of the Trinidadian culture has emerged in the handicraft of Hollis Andrews, a coconut sculptor and driftwood artist. 

Hollis Andrews base his creative expression solely on a natural craft. His artistic impulse thrives only on natural elements - the seeds, fruits and wood that pervades his tropical environment. His insistence upon utilizing elements native to his homeland in creating images of local significance is his celebration of Caribbean history and its culture. 

A Natural Craft: From the Bush to the Beach blends still photography with video footage to capture Hollis Andrews' creative endeavour as he explains the genesis and development of his unusual art. It explores how, through craft, a grassroots man accepts what the Caribbean has offered to him and gives it back, packaged and re-shaped into a unique form of beauty.
 

When Eyes Feel

When Ruth’s house is gutted by fire and she takes up residence at an old abandoned beach house, she mistakenly receives a journal written by Fiawah, her husband’s illiterate mistress. Ruth hates Fiawah but little did she know that Fiawah’s journal would be the catalyst that would propel her to examine the fabric of her life, knitted by its scraps of memory. She reads the first journal entry triggering memories of her younger self, one who had, twenty years earlier, engineered a whirlwind romance between herself and South Pacific islander, Taumauosi, who was unaware that she had deliberately lured him to the altar with lies of her pregnancy.

With husband in tow, Ruth arrives in Malaugui, Taumauosi’s home country but she is unaware that a bride-to-be (Umani) had already been chosen for her husband. At the airport, as soon as the Mokatikula clan realizes that Taumauosi has shown up with a Western wife of his own choosing, that bride-to-be is abandoned and Ruth is hustled to Taumauosi’s traditional village.


In the village, Ruth discovers that the evolving stranger, her husband, has four mothers, he carves wooden figurines as a hobby, he harbours political ambitions and he cowers in his father’s shadow. She is deeply perplexed by the traditional South Pacific culture where food is cooked on hot stones buried underground, stories are told by elders under the moonlit sky, young boys are schooled in weaponry and hunting, arranged marriages are conducted, bride prices are negotiated and a clan’s children belongs to the entire community and can be given to childless couples within that clan community. That first night, Ruth also discovers that men stay apart from their women in their own “men’s hut” but when Taumauosi attempts to follow this traditional custom, Ruth demands that he stay with her in the hut to which she has been assigned. Taumauosi complies but from that moment, the tension between his father and himself intensifies and the Chief, Taumauosi’s father, unable to live down the scandal created by his son’s marital union, becomes Ruth’s most formidable opposition.

When Eyes Feel