Xala Ramesar wins Youth Jury Award at Green Screen festival

Although she won the Youth Jury Award of the tenth annual Green Screen Film Festival’s Very Short Shorts Mobile Film competition this year, Xala Ramesar has no immediate intention of becoming a filmmaker.

Ramesar, 24, won the category with the one-minute animated film, A Journey To Our Own. It is a story of two brothers in a wasteland of empty food-packs who go on an adventure in search for food and eventually find local produce.

The winners were announced on November 2, with Riyadh Rahaman winning the Overall Jury Award, and other filmmakers winning The People’s Choice Award, and #PlantYuhROOTS Special Category.

Ramesar entered the competition last year “to try it” and so was “ecstatic” about the win this time around. She was drawn to the event because it was a fun way to do something helpful on an important platform.

“I think the entries were really strong this year so to be at the top of the pack and win something on the second try was really great.”

This year’s theme of the festival was The New Normal, reflecting the way things have changed because of the covid19 pandemic.

“I didn’t want to do something that was directly about covid because I figured everybody would be doing that. Also, I felt like, by the time the submissions were closing in September, we had already heard so much about covid, so why not talk about the indirect repercussions of the pandemic, one of which was the issue of food sustainability in TT.”

Ramesar said there were many issues from which to choose – the economies of many countries were slowing down, fuel prices fell because there was less demand, people were pushing for alternative sources of energy and more.

At the start of the pandemic in TT, her family, like many others, planted a home garden in Curepe in the effort to gain some sort of food security. And that aspect peaked her interest.

“From my research I realised our (TT’s) food is 82 per cent imports. I was thinking, if this all goes south and it really is an apocalyptic situation, or we don’t have as much foreign exchange, or we’re not making as much from our exports, and generally don’t have access to those imports, if we are so reliant in foreign food, how are we going to keep feeding ourselves?”

She felt it was important to have independence in this area, that TT should be able to stand on its own if necessary. That independence, she said, would strengthen the economy since the country would spend less money, have the possibility of increasing exports, and it would stimulate entrepreneurial endeavours.

Ramesar may enter the competition again next year if the topic intrigued her but, other than that, she did not believe she would do much filmmaking in the future as she found film equipment to be intimidating. She graduated from UWI last year with a degree in visual arts, for which she has a passion. While her focus was on fine arts, she also did several design courses at the institution.

As a graphic designer, Ramesar enjoys creating mainly animation but also dabbles in photography, videography, and digital painting. Her hope is to continue working in graphic design and motion graphics as she especially enjoys branding for companies.

Although her father is local filmmaker Yao Ramesar, her only other film experience was the Niherst Science Music Video competition in 2013 where she and two schoolmates wrote a rap about hurricane preparedness and filmed a video for it.

“We came second. It was a lot of fun and we learned about hurricane preparedness in the process,” she laughed.

“I just want to thank my mom (singer-songwriter Gillian Moor) and sister Maya for always being there and supporting me and being my test subjects for animation when I needed help.”