Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI) and Third Horizon Film Festival (THFF) returns with A Season of Caribbean Cinema: a series of three screening events, each comprising a feature-length film and a short from the Caribbean and its diaspora, followed by a conversation with select film directors.
On August 31, part two begins with the film Stones Have Laws (Dee Sitonu a Weti), followed by a discussion with the feature filmmaker, Tolin Alexander.
Feature Film
Stones Have Laws (Dee Sitonu a Weti) is an immersive initiation into the life of a Maroon community in the former Dutch colony of Suriname. Combining stories of African ancestral traditions and escaped slavery with enacted rituals, the film explores how the community’s powerful ties to the land have become endangered as industries threaten to devastate the region through deforestation and mining. The directors closely involved the community in the development of the film, which was created using an experimental process of collective scripting. The result is a unique cinematic form that bridges filmmaking, poetry and theatre.
Direction: Tolin Alexander, Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan, in collaboration with Maroon communities in Suriname
Format/length: DCP, 100 min.
Release: 2018
Produced by: seriousFilm, VRIZA, Ideal
Supported by: De Verbeelding, ProducPon IncenPve, Fonds 21, AFK
Shorts Program
The Whisper of the Leaves is a contemplative journey of harmony between different forms of life that coexist on the earth. This film is a meditation on the effect of time, movement of the human spirit, and passage to new forms of life, through the eyes, ears, and bodies of three elderly land workers living in a small community in the outskirts of Bauta, Cuba.
From Trinidad and Tobago, Amir Aether Valen is a graduate of Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, where he specialized in documentary film direction. In his time there, he made over 15 short films, some of which have competed both locally and internationally at film festivals.
