Filmmaker curates story of Cazabon

Trinidadian/Venezuelan filmmaker Marilyn Birchfield enjoys highlighting and sharing the stories of Caribbean historical figures who are not well-known. Her current project is Michel Jean Cazabon, Trinidad and Tobago’s first internationally-known 19th-century artist.

Birchfield’s mother was Venezuelan and her father was a sailor in the US Navy. Her brothers and sisters from her mother’s previous marriage were born in Trinidad and Tobago as well.

“I left here at age nine to live in the US and then Venezuela, visiting Trinidad every year. My family was part of Carnival for many years. My sister was Lil Hart. It’s part of our heritage. I love Trinidad.”

She has a masters degree (cum laude) in mass communication from Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts.

She said she believed people in the Caribbean should know about the past to create better futures.

“To be here in the future, we have to look at what we had, our heritage. I consider myself a Trinidadian and I want people to know, not just about Cazabon, but so many other cultural things in the Caribbean that are fascinating. I think the Caribbean is the untouched frontier and people are just starting to discover the richness of our heritage in Latin American and the Caribbean.”

She has always had a love of photography, encouraged by her aunt, who was an amateur photographer.

“From photography grew my interest in film and video, and when I decided to go back to university, I opted for a career in directing and producing film and television. I’ve done a lot of directing and producing.

"It’s not easy as a woman filmmaker, I’ve had my share of ups and downs through the years.”

She said at one TV station in Venezuela, she was told she had a great resume, but wouldn’t be hired because she was a woman.

“It was a blow. They always want to hire us as producers, because that’s the gritty, dirty work in filmmaking. It’s a great challenge and I’ve done a lot of it. I can direct and I love it, but to be able to direct, I have to produce and direct my own projects. Because to get a job as a director as a woman, women are still a minority.”

She said she was also an avid reader, which led her to writing. She worked in Venezuela, Argentina and the US. Her first job after graduation was for CBS Sports during the Pan-American games in Caracas.

She worked on commercial films, and was assistant director on several films.

“I work on a lot of my own projects, because I know I’ll be able to direct them and write them, and get them off the ground as a director.

“I like historical films and figures, documentaries and films. I believe we have to learn from our past.

"I also like to photograph people, and I have a series of photographs called Textures. I love people who I think had something to contribute to humanity.

"I have another big project with a Venezuelan writer from the early 1900s who lived in Paris and auto-exiled herself because her writings were not accepted in Venezuela at the time.

“I did another documentary on a famous Venezuelan pianist from the 1800s, Teresa Carreno, and she was a woman who travelled the world. It’s not a very well-known story but it’s fascinating, because she married something like five times, she played for (US) President Lincoln, she was a child prodigy.

"I just love all those people who had all that richness, that sometimes I don’t think we know enough about.”

Birchfield said she initially became interested in Cazabon after hearing researcher and art dealer Geoffrey MacLean give a lecture about him, and then began reading everything she could about him.

“I was like, 'Wow, look at this black man from 1800s Trinidad (Caazabon's family were free coloured plantation owners) who goes to England to study at this posh school.' He had all the possibilities that other children of his time and age wouldn’t have had. Then he goes to France and marries a Frenchwoman. There are so many elements of interest.

“Then when he comes back to Trinidad, he establishes a friendship with the British governor, Lord Harris. Some people might think that was a strange friendship, but I think Cazabon was so well educated, had travelled the world, and I’m sure Lord Harris’s interest in art made a click for the friendship to develop."Whether or not the two were actually friends, Harris was an important patron of Cazabon. "Lord Harris then commissioned him to do many paintings and drawings for and about Trinidad.”

Birchfield said the story was fascinating, with social and cultural elements. She directed a documentary on Cazabon for the 200th anniversary of his birth which she wasn’t able to complete, but thought it would be interesting if someone wanted to fund it.

“The documentary gives aspects that the fiction of the film might not give you. It was well formatted. We were going to interview people in Martinique and London and Trinidad, everyone connected to Cazabon. It was more important in that it would reach the children and the younger generations to know historically.

"Everything is audiovisual this day, and young people don’t read as much, but you can tell them the story through film and video of who and what their cultural history and heritage was, and that’s so important in any country.”

Birchfield said the film script had been pre-selected for the UK Film Festival (London) Script Competition, and if selected, she would be given the funds to produce and distribute the film. She said there had been a previous opportunity to produce it, but the company decided it wouldn’t work on any historical projects that year.

“The film script is based on Geoffrey’s research and history, but you have to add a bit of excitement in fiction, the elements that might not be true but could be based in hearsay. Nobody knows what Cazabon looked like: all his self-portraits were burnt or lost. A lot of information was lost. There’s a period where he’d left his wife in France to come to Trinidad and supposedly had a lover, and that’s what I used in the film for interest and conflict.

“I touched on some historical aspects as well: the freeing of the slaves, the bringing of Indians to Trinidad, what Lord Harris did for education. It’s very rich. Filming the script would give the opportunity to show the beauty of Trinidad, the places that Cazabon loved to paint, like the Pitch Lake, which he was commissioned to paint by Harris, and the Bamboo Cathedral, the Diego Martin Valley, and others.”

She said studying the life of Cazabon showed her how role models and life lessons can be found in any age.

“Cazabon lived in a society where he saturated the market with his paintings. After Governor Harris left, there was nobody else. He had painted portraits for the rich people through Governor Harris and he probably wasn’t as accepted as he should have been. So little by little he had less and less work, and he did die poor, including selling his paintings for a plate of food or drink.

"That’s why I think it’s important to recover the value he had as a painter as an artist in Trinidad’s heritage. I think he has a value people could learn from, because he was a bold man.

“Given the state of the world, with so many problems and differences and religious differences, I think this film could be something important, because it covers so many things. It shows it doesn’t really matter what colour you are or where you come from, if you have elements that connect you. I think if we were more accepting and tolerant of other’s conditions and beliefs, maybe the world wouldn’t be such a terrible place.”