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TT Film Fest Film of the Day Thurs 20th

The 13th Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival runs until September 25th on two screens in MovieTowne Port of Spain, one in San Fernando, another in Tobago and at the University of the West Indies. Film writer, BC Pires, will be picking a Film of the Day every day. Pires sat on the first TT Film Fest Jury and wrote the Judge’s Report and has been the Youth Jury’s mentor since its inception in 2014. A different film will be picked every day, and other worthwhile films mentioned. Because of the limitations of programming schedules, the film of the day may not necessarily be the “best” one. Films with an * have been or will be daily picks.

Today’s film is:

Hall (Rommel Hall/ 2017/ Barbados / Documentary feature / 95 mins/ Unrated), 6pm Sc 8, MovieTowne POS.

Barbadian filmmaker Rommel Hall’s documentary about Barbados’ best known – and, it has to be said, best-loved – convicted murderer and jailbreaker is remarkable. Classified as a “true crime documentary” it is far closer to a true social mirror.Hall, who escaped from Bridgetown’s Glendairy Prison three times, was one of three young men convicted, probably under what lawyers call “the felony-murder rule”, of the murder of Cyril Sisnett, at Sisnett’s Francia Plantation Great House. The documentary does not follow the usual true crime template of examining the evidence but rather reveals, through interviews, the response of a society that, 184 years after Emancipation, is so firmly divided by race that mixed marriages between locals were all but unheard of until this generation; if there were such a river in Barbados, the clear line would be between the Black and the White Niles. In that context, Hall’s worth as documentary is more than skin deep. The title character utters not one word in the film but what is said – and sung, by popular calypsonians – of him speaks volumes about race relations in a place still largely socially organised on the same basis as that of the sugar plantation; the film could almost have been subtitled, “Barbados’ Robin Hood”.

Also consider: *TTIT 40th Annivesary, 6pm, and *Cocote, 8.30pm MT Tobago.

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