The 10th year of the Caribbean Film Series begins with two days of feature & short films portraying the complexity of Caribbean parenthood and land futures
The Caribbean Film Series
February 28th and March 1st at 7PM
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
A MOTHER APART
directed by Laurie Townshend
Canada/USA | 2024 | 88min 53sec | English, German
Genre: Non-Fiction
How do you raise a child when your own mother abandoned you? In a remarkable story of healing and forgiveness, Jamaican-American poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin, renowned for performances in Def Poetry Slam and hit solo shows like MotherStruck!, radically re-imagines the essential art of mothering. In seeking her elusive mother—a trail that leads to Brooklyn, Montreal, Cologne and, finally, Jamaica—Staceyann and her daughter forge a new sense of home.
preceded by
Nwa
directed by Hans Augustave
Nwa is an emotional coming-of-age film about Frantz, a first-generation Haitian-American boy, torn by the decision to get the haircut he knows his strict immigrant father would approve of, or a trendy cut connecting him to the Black American culture he's been warned not to embrace.
Post-screening Q&A with Laurie Townshend, Staceyann Chin, and Hans Augustave
L'HOMME-VERTIGE: TALES OF A CITY
directed by Malaury Eloi-Paisley
Guadeloupe | 2024 | 93 mins | Guadeloupean Creole and French, w/English subtitles
Genre: Non-Fiction
In the Chanzy neighbourhood of Pointe-à-Pitre, the economic capital of Guadeloupe, bulldozers are pulling down residential blocks. L’homme-vertige: Tales of a City follows the city’s wanderers through the empty streets. They all carry the wounds of this city within them, and are now seers. Circulating throughout the internal and external spaces, both endangered, are the director’s empathetic conversations and relationships—with the lung-diseased former freedom fighter Ti Chal, with the crack addict Priscilla, with the angry and then calmer Eddie, with the fish scaler Kanpèch. Eric resists the inevitable dilapidation with his view of the city, his recitation of texts by Joël Beuze and Amílcar Cabral.