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FILM

‘Possible Landscapes’, 2025

Directed by Kannan Arunasalam

Produced by Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas

Runtime: 105 min

Country: Trinidad & Tobago

Release year: 2025

A feature documentary film directed by Kannan Arunasalam and produced and conceptualised by Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas.

Possible Landscapes joins seven people in seven different regions of the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago.

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 Just Futures Initiative.

World premier here

Notes: To convey a wide spectrum of moods throughout this documentary film, I blended the sounds of Trinidad & Tobago's local instrumentation, such as the mandolin, maracs, cuatro, steel pan, iron, sitar etc. with cinematic elements like orchestral percussion and strings.

‘We Love We Self Up Here’ wins best film, Society for Architectural Historians,
April 2023

“Buoyed by a musical score attuned to silences and light, the film invites viewers to listen, probe, and linger.”

— The Society of Architectural Historians

We Love We Self Up Here
Year Completed: 2021
Kannan Arunasalam, Director
Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas, Producers

We Love We Self Up Here is a documentary that explores narratives of lived experiences of urban, agricultural, and industrial landscapes tied to colonial and postcolonial legacies of sugar production and hydrocarbon extraction in Trinidad & Tobago.

The film captures complex histories of labor and migration through the intimate stories of a few persons. The history of architecture in the Caribbean is inseparable from that of the parallel development of capitalism, slavery, and indentured servitude. These emerged through the appropriation and design of the landscape itself, as a function of colonial capitalist modernity’s extractive regime with its highly profitable re-invention of the racial division of labor in the plantation system, and the indigenous genocide and coerced migration of peoples it entailed. It is in the face of this haunting background that the first generation of post- or de-colonial thinkers took it as one of their tasks to make this landscape possible—in literature, philosophy and the arts—as a space of embodied lived experience. We Love We Self Up Here offers narrative insight into this sedimented history in the way that it, to quote Édouard Glissant, “still reverberates to this day” in the lived spatial experiences of the landscapes of the people of the Caribbean. The film has been screened at Cornell AAP, Harvard GSD, and the Department of Architecture at Cambridge University, UK.

‘Vulnerable’ wins New Wave Short Film Festival, April 2024

Best psychological drama laurel

Semi Finalist laurel

Official Selection laurel

New Wave Short Film Festival Winner laurel

Official Selection laurel

Nominee laurel

Official Selection laurel

Vulnerable Film Poster

Vulnerable is an experimental short film which addresses how one fares, when your façade burns up in smoke and you are now left to confront the tumult within. The film features a cast and crew of 98% women in key roles from producer, director of photography, editor, composers et al. The film also challenges the male gaze, as it challenges how Caribbean women of colour are represented on screen. So very proud to have been a part of this project. Thanks so much for having me. I had complete freedom with the score and it pushed me to explore storytelling through music. I’m really proud of this work.

Starring Samara Lallo

A film by Shea Best

Produced by Tiny Thunder Productions and S. Best Productions

Original Score by Jeanine S. Ruiz

Director of Photography Latisha Leslie Edited by Latisha Leslie

‘Sins of the Father’ wins Best Film, Conch Shell Int' & Caribbean Tales, 2022

A film by Spielzart Entainment

Written & Directed by Azriel Bahadoor

Produced by Ryan Chaitram

Original Score by Jeanine S. Ruiz

A priest has his devotion put to the test, as he listens to the confession of an ex convict; one that was incarcerated at a prison he visited years ago.

Sins of The Father Film Poster

‘The Cutlass’ wins Best Feature film, 2017

Inspired by true events, THE CUTLASS is a dramatic thriller set in the tropical wilderness of Trinidad and tells the story of a young woman who falls into the grasp of a dangerous sociopath. She finds herself isolated and musters the courage to emotionally battle the unsettled mind of her abductor.

The Cutlass Laurel collection

The Lost Tapes:
Audio Documentary, 2024

Produced by Joseph Bertrand

Theme song and original score by Jeanine S. Ruiz

The Audio Documentary chronicles the 1990 Attempted Coup events in Trinidad through the lens of NBS Radio 610.

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Taking the vibrant energy of soca music and reimagine it for cinema. Adapted for the big screen.

let's connect.

syncmusic@j9perspective.com

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