[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Produced by Natalie Melas and Tao DuFour, and directed by filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam, the documentary movie We Love We Self Up Right here lately gained an Award for Movie and Video from the Society of Architectural Historians. Linda B. Glaser studies for The Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Cornell College). [Also see our previous post Transdisciplinary film explores Trinidad and Tobago.]
The Award for Movie and Video from the Society of Architectural Historians has been given to the movie “We Love We Self Up Right here,” produced by Natalie Melas, affiliate professor of comparative literature within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Tao DuFour, assistant professor of structure within the Faculty of Structure, Artwork and Planning. The documentary quick was directed by filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam.
The movie explores narratives of lived experiences of city, agricultural, and industrial landscapes tied to colonial and postcolonial legacies of sugar manufacturing and hydrocarbon extraction in Trinidad & Tobago. It grew out of a Mellon Expanded Observe Seminar co-taught by Melas and DuFour in fall 2019: Atmospheric Pressures: Local weather Imaginaries and Migration within the Caribbean. The course included per week lengthy discipline journey to Trinidad.
The movie is a really interdisciplinary undertaking, Melas informed the Cornell Chronicle in 2021, bringing three very completely different viewpoints to the undertaking, every of which reworked the movie in several methods: “That of an architect and spatial theorist attuned in a specific method to the panorama of the island as a result of he grew up there, that of a scholar and critic of Caribbean literature and thought in comparative context and eventually that of the fine-hewed aesthetic and technical experience of the filmmaker.”
For full article, see https://as.cornell.edu/information/film-co-produced-natalie-melas-wins-award
Additionally see extra on Tao DuFour at https://aap.cornell.edu/folks/tao-dufour and on Natalie Melas at https://as.cornell.edu/folks/natalie-melas
[Header photo from https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/screening-we-love-we-self-here. Next photo: Behind the scenes of “We Love We Self Up Here.” Cornell students Austin Lillywhite (left) and Afifa Ltifi (slightly visible besides) with filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam.]