The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) present two film screenings and a conversation with directors Gavin Ramoutar and Mason Richards, Dr. Sheril Antonio film scholar and Associate Arts Professor in the Department of Art & Public Policy and Grace Aneiza Ali, Curator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Public Policy, on the issues of boyhood and masculinity and migration within the Guyanese and Caribbean diaspora.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts.
Image: ANTIMAN (2014), Director Gavin Ramoutar
This event is free and open to the public, ID required at the entrance.
About the Films:
In Gavin Ramoutar’s short film, ANTIMAN Anil, an introverted young teen navigates the pressures by his father to become a cricket player to prove his masculinity. Privately, he must reconcile his love for an older boy while living in a homophobic village in a Guyanese countryside.
In Mason Richards’ short film The Seawall, ten-year-old Malachi prepares to leave Guyana and his beloved grandmother for the United States. As he wrestles with the impending rupture from his motherland, the film poignantly examines how migration — from a young boy’s perspective — fragments a family.
About the Speakers:
Grace Aneiza Ali, is a Guyanese-American Curator, Assistant Professor and Provost Fellow in the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Her curatorial practice centers on global contemporary art and Caribbean Art with a focus on her homeland Guyana. She is the founder and editorial director of OF NOTE Magazine— on the intersection of art and politics and GuyanaModern.com on contemporary arts and culture of Guyana. She serves as Curator-at-Large for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in New York.
Dr. Sheril Antonio, is a film scholar, an Associate Arts Professor in the Department of Art and Public Policy and the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She is the author of Contemporary African American Cinema.
Gavin Ramoutar is a film and television producer, adjunct faculty at NYU’s Kanbar Institute of Film & Television, and a native of Guyana. Ramoutar’s celebrated short film, ANTIMAN won the 2016 LGBT Special Prize at the Sao Paolo International Short Film Festival, and the 2015 Youth Jury Prize at the prestigious Odense International Film Festival. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Fordham University and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from New York University’s Tisch School of Arts.
Mason Richards is a writer/director, an adjunct faculty member at Emerson College-Los Angeles, Filmmaker in Residence at Ithaca College, and a native of Guyana. He was the recipient of the 2012 Sony Pictures Diversity Fellowship, earned his MFA in Film Directing from Cal Arts. The Seawall was an official selection for the Cannes Film Festival (2011), the Havana International Film Festival in Cuba (2014) and has screened at global festivals, including the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival (2014) and the Timehri Film Festival in Guyana (2016).