Probably the most iconic image from any Caribbean film: Jimmy Cliff as Ivanhoe Martin in The Harder They Come
The CRB’s chief interest, as our name makes clear, is books. But it’s also clear that no art form is isolated or insulated from others, and literature is part of a creative continuum with visual and performing arts. From early on, the CRB has tried to engage with Caribbean art especially, as well as film and music, and in the magazine’s current online incarnation we intend to expand our critical focus to pay more sustained, serious attention to these forms of creative imagination and thought.
Tomorrow the September 2010 issue of the CRB will begin publication. I’m very pleased about two particular elements. First, later this month we’ll launch a regular music column, in which we’ll publish reviews of new releases in a wide range of Caribbean genres, as well as short essays on specific musicians and composers, significant songs and albums of the past, events, trends, and musical phenomena. Second, the September CRB will include a special section on recent Caribbean film, supported by the trinidad+tobago film festival 2010.
This is the CRB’s second partnership with the ttff, who previously supported a small section of film reviews in our August 2008 issue. This month’s special section is more ambitious: for the duration of this issue, we’ll publish a new review each week of films drawn from the ttff’s 2009 and 2010 programmes. (The films for review were selected by the CRB, and the reviews independently commissioned; the reviewers’ opinions are their own, not the ttff’s.) We’re grateful the ttff recognises the importance of creating a critical context for the work of Caribbean filmmakers, and we hope this initiative is the beginning of more regular film coverage in the magazine.
You can find out more about the trinidad+tobago film festival 2010 at their website, with news and updates at the festival blog.
