Possible Landscapes, a feature documentary made by professor Natalie Melas in collaboration with professor Tao DuFour (Architecture) and documentary filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam ,as part of a Mellon-funded research project, will have its world premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia on August 3, where it is one of 90 official selections out 2277 submissions.
https://www.blackstarfest.org/festival/films/possible-landscapes/
https://www.possiblelandscapesfilm.com/
Possible Landscapes is a poignant exploration of intergenerational experiences of Caribbean environments shot over two seasons in Trinidad and Tobago. Across sugarcane fields, steep hillsides, on fishing boats and through dying coral reefs, the film presents intimate portraits of people in their daily lives and examines the impacts of colonial legacies, post-independence aspirations, and the evolving forces of extractivism.
A collaboration between a documentary filmmaker, Kannan Arunasalam and two professors, Tao DuFour (Architecture) a spatial theorist and Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature) a postcolonial comparatist, Possible Landscapes is the outcome of the team research project, “Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago,” funded through a grant from Cornell University’s Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge and the Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative. The research project investigated methods of field research and representation, drawing on the visual and narrative resources of documentary film to foreground lived experience of landscapes and environments.
