Loading Events

« All Events

Sat, Sept 12 – Living Legacies

September 12 @ 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm EDT

PART 1

Living Legacies

1:00PM-3:30PM | Dundas West Studio

✦  DOUGLA by Sádé Budhlall, Jerel Ramsey | Trinidad and Tobago | 2026 | 04min30s
 Here and There, In the Wind by Alejandro D. Oregano Colón | USA/ Puerto Rico | 2025 | 14min
✦  Indigenous Origins by Alexis Garcia | Puerto Rico/United States | 2025 | 08min
✦  Tambu by Laurie Lambert | Jamaica / Canada | 2026 | 23min
✦  Suppose the law a loss by Naomi Sineva Toth | Canada /France | 2025 | 23min
✦  INDIVISUM: Legacies Adrift by Katia Café-Fébrissy | Canada | 2026 | 1h15min
—–
Filmmaker Talkbacks

The past is never truly behind us. The films in Living Legacies reveal how history continues to shape identity, belonging, and the struggle for justice across the Caribbean and its diaspora. Through dance, poetry, personal journeys, and documentary, they uncover the enduring presence of colonialism, migration, ancestral knowledge, and cultural memory in contemporary life.

Whether reclaiming erased histories, preserving Indigenous traditions, navigating complex identities, or confronting the lasting impact of colonial laws, these works remind us that legacy is not simply inherited—it is lived, questioned, and transformed. Together, the films invite us to reflect on the histories we carry and the futures we create, affirming that understanding the past is essential to imagining a more just and connected tomorrow.

Dougla Poster 1

DOUGLA

Directed by Sádé Budhlall and Jerel Ramsey, Trinidad and Tobago, 2026

Logline:A screendance that explores Afro–Indo relational politics through a choreographic encounter between Odissi and Moko Jumbie practice. It follows two figures as they search for a connection across unfamiliar movement worlds.

Synopsis: “DOUGLA is a short dance film exploring Afro-Indo relational politics set within a speculative plantation-era Trinidad and Tobago. The film follows an Odissi dancer, imagined as an Apsara, and a Moko Jumbie as they move toward and away from one another in search of a shared language through dance.
Rather than presenting relation as seamless or resolved, DOUGLA attends to the difficulty of connection. As Odissi and Moko Jumbie movement meet, the film attends to the fragility and ongoing labor of relation within histories shaped by slavery, Indian indenture, and colonial systems of separation.”

Runtime: 4m 30s

Watch the Trailer

Here and There in the Wind Poster Alejandro D Orengo Colon

Here and There, in the Wind

Directed by Alejandro D. Orengo Colón, USA/ Puerto Rico, 2025

Logline: Fabi, a housekeeper in Wisconsin, moves through her days balancing chores and a search for normalcy during a lonely, wintry holiday far from her home in Puerto Rico.

Runtime: 13m 40s

Watch the Trailer

PosterYoSoyLoizeña

Indigenous Origins – Loiza, Puerto Rico

Directed by Alexis Garcia, Puerto Rico/United States, 2025

Logline: “From sacred traditions to rhythmic movement and inspired creativity, Indigenous Origins captures how ancestral roots continue to shape the identity and resilience of Loíza, a Puerto Rican town. Through spirituality, art, and culture, Yo Soy Loizeña reveals how preserving legacy through traditions, the body, the drum, and the community remain living vessels of memory, healing, and resilience. Each call and response carries layers of history honoring ancestors, affirming identity, and asserting presence.”

Synopsis: Yo Soy Loizeña journeys into the vibrant community of Loíza, Puerto Rico, where spirituality, art, and culture unite to sustain a rich Afro-Caribbean heritage. Through the perspective of Dorayma Mercado and guided by renowned artist Samuel Lind and Bomba dancer Mar Cruz, the film explores Bomba as more than music and dance—it is a living tradition rooted in African resilience and Indigenous Taíno influences. Passed from one generation to the next, Bomba becomes an act of remembrance, resistance, healing, and celebration. As part of the Indigenous Origins series, Yo Soy Loizeña reveals how ancestral memory continues to shape identity, strengthen community, and affirm the enduring cultural legacy of the Caribbean.

Runtime: 7m 49s

Watch the Trailer

TAMBU DOCUMENTARY ONE SHEET_02172026_FINAL_Instagram Story Laurie Lambert

Tambu

Directed by Laurie Lambert, Jamaica, 2026

Logline: The story of a community built on care, creativity, and spirituality.

Synopsis: Tambu is a documentary that explores TambuFest, a vibrant day-long celebration of drumming and dance in Jamaica. Produced by anthropologist Deborah A. Thomas, musician Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn, and Dr. Nicholas Ferguson, the film captures how drumming traditions, from kumina to djembe, preserve African diasporic histories. Blending festival footage with visits to plantation ruins and archival imagery from Ghana, Tambu honors the intergenerational passing of these rituals—each beat a testament to survival, resistance, and cultural pride.

Runtime: 22m 59s

Watch the Trailer

Suppose-Insta1080x1350-BAT Naomi Toth

Suppose the law a loss

Directed by Naomi Sineva Toth, France/Canada, 2025

Logline: Haunted by the massacre aboard the slave ship Zong massacre, poet M. NourbeSe Philip transforms a colonial court ruling into a fractured poetic reckoning, seeking to recover the voices of Africans erased by history and law.

Synopsis: Haunted by the massacre aboard the slave ship Zong massacre, poet M. NourbeSe Philip transforms a colonial court ruling into a fractured poetic reckoning, seeking to recover the voices of Africans erased by history and law.

Runtime: 23m 5s

Watch the Trailer

Poster INDIVISUM Katia Café-Fébrissy

INDIVISUM: Legacies Adrift

Directed by Katia Café-Fébrissy, Canada, 2026

Logline: When a Canadian filmmaker returns to Guadeloupe to confront her family’s inheritance dispute, she uncovers a colonial-era legal system that continues to dispossess Caribbean families of their ancestral land.

Synopsis: Set in Guadeloupe, this investigative documentary begins with a family inheritance conflict and expands into a wider story of land dispossession rooted in colonial law. Returning to her ancestral homeland, a Canadian filmmaker uncovers how an outdated French inheritance system allows relatives to disinherit one another and seize family land, fueling decades of conflict and violence. Through intimate testimonies, legal investigation, and historical reflection, the film reveals how colonial structures continue to fracture Guadeloupean families and erode generational wealth. Personal and political, the documentary exposes the enduring legacy of colonialism embedded within modern systems of property and power.

Runtime: 1hr 15m

Watch the Trailer

Venue

Organizers

  • CaribbeanTales International Film Festival
  • Caribbean Film Festival