City on the Hill 

CITY ON THE HILL
Winner of the Peoples’ Choice Award at the Trinidad and Tobago
Film Festival 2015.
A film on the Built and Cultural Heritage of East Port of Spain
Directed by Michael Mooleedhar and Patricia Mohammed
This film was commissioned by project ‘Leveraging Built and Cultural Heritage of East Port of Spain”. It focuses on the history and culture of the communities erected on the hillside slopes of Laventille and adjacent neighbourhood of Belmont. Due to the limited scope of the project, the film directors were unable to capture the rich history and heritage of the other communities that comprise the East Port of Spain area.
Through historical records and markings on the landscape, the film examines the craftsmanship of those whose labour was quarried to erect the early buildings of Port of Spain. It makes connections between a spiritual architecture and its influences on music, dance and artistic production now recognized among the primary signifiers of culture of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago.
The conventional narrator is replaced with the poetry and prose of Derek Walcott, and Wayne Brown read by Wendell Manwarren of Trinidad and Tobago’s 3 Canal performance group, thus absorbing the literary lens on this rich built and cultural heritage which we discover through testimonies of creativity and survival of its citizens young and old. The documentary works against the grain of how Laventille has been conventionally presented, unraveling the dominant image of violence, indolence and poverty with the creative traditions and symbols that future development should preserve.
Directors: Michael Mooleedhar and Patricia Mohammed
Cinematography: Emilio Wizzkydd
Associate Producer: Sharda Patasar
Editor: Michael Mooleedhar
Runtime: 47 mins
Funded by the Research and Development Impact Fund, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, 2015.
EPOS Project Team
Dr Asad Mohammed, Dr. Perry Polar, Prof. Bridget Brereton, Rudlynn Roberts, Dr Bhesham Ramlal, Joseph Leung Che, Christian Jattan, Dexnell Peters, Sarika Mahabir, Prof. Patricia Mohammed, Michael Mooleedhar, Dr. Sharda Patasar