1990: before, during and after
Four-part series/ 30 minutes/ episode
In Development
For six days in July and August 1990, the people of Trinidad and Tobago watched in fear and disbelief as the single most deadly – and arguably the most shocking – event in the modern history of the country unfolded. During the attempted coup of 1990, members of the Jamaat Al Muslimeen, a local radical Islamic group, raided the Parliament, bombed the police headquarters, commandeered the national television station, TTT, and killed seven people.
In the four-part documentary series, ‘1990’, award-winning filmmaker and television producer, Mariel Brown, will explore the issues that gave rise to the 1990 coup attempt; take an in depth look at each day of the stand-off – in the Red House and Trinidad and Tobago Television, and in Port of Spain as a whole – which culminated in Abu Bakr’s surrender; examine the effect of the resulting amnesty and other court cases around the Muslimeen; and try to highlight the scars left on both the people who were directly involved, and the national community.
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How Laws Are Made
Client: The Parliament Channel
How Laws Are Made is s standalone documentary which looks at the lawmaking process in Trinidad & Tobago and explores ways in which the wider society can become more involved in determining the country’s legislative agenda. The programme features interviews with former Attorney General, John Jeremie, former Independent Senator, Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, trade unionist David Abdullah and many others.
Credits
Executive Producer: The Parliament Channel
Producers for The Parliament Channel: Candice Dubarry and Colleen Holder
Producer, director and editor: Mariel Brown
Researchers: Maya Cross-Lovelace and Soraya Moolchan
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The West Indies at War
Client: The Parliament Channel
The West Indies at War is a four-part television series which explores the oft’-overlooked participation of West Indian soldiers in World War I. In addition, the series addresses the question of how the experience of the war kickstarted significant changes to the socio-economic landscape of the region, towards more participatory governance and workers’ rights.
Winner Best Television Documentary, Caribbean Broadcasting Union Awards, 2016.
You can watch West Indies at War on the Parliament Channel’s YouTube Channel.
Credits
Executive Producer: The Parliament Channel
Producers for The Parliament Channel: Candice Dubarry and Colleen Holder
Series creator, producer, director and editor: Mariel Brown
Co-writers and researchers: Lynne Parks and Dainia Wright
Original Music: Francesco Emmanuel
Director of Photography: Sean Edghill
Sancoche: A Delicious Melee of Caribbean People, Food and Craft (2004-2008)
Sancoche is a cooking and lifestyle television series, hosted by Mariel Brown, which ran on the air for six seasons, with upwards of 90 episodes, broadcast in Trinidad and Tobago and around the English-speaking Caribbean.
In Trinidad, a sancoche is a kind of soup that families make at the end of the week when all that remains in the fridge are left-overs. So the soup becomes a delicious combination of surprising and unexpected ingredients. That’s what the programme Sancoche is about too. We filmed coffee production in Jamaica, Arawaks making cassava bread in Guyana, pottery-making in central Trinidad, girlie tea parties and sumptuous feasts. The show is suffused with laughter and joy, and touches on inspiration that can start out as simple as a mushroom omelette, and end up in paroxysms of pavlova glee!
Watch Sancoche for free on our YouTube Channel, SANCOCHETV.
Makin’ Mas with Brian Mac Farlane (2006)
Filmed in the months leading up to carnival 2006, Makin’ Mas with Brian Mac Farlane was an all-access pass behind the scenes of the making of a carnival band in Trinidad and Tobago.
You’ve heard of Trinidad’s Carnival – one of the world’s biggest street festivals. For many people, Carnival (or what we call locally, “mas”) is the epitome of Trinidadian-ness: essential. SAVANT followed Brian MacFarlane, one of Port of Spain’s most creative Carnival band designers for three months and filmed all aspects of his creative evolution. The six episodes make it clear that producing a carnival band is fast-paced, chaotic, and perilous, with disasters lurking around every corner. Months of work culminate in one glorious day of music, costumes, heat and people – it’s all part of the story of Makin’ Mas!
Makin Mas with Brian Mac Farlane is funded by CCN TV6.
My Dream Job! (2007)
Broadcast in September 2007, MY DREAM JOB! is a six-part television series that follows ambitious and highly motivated secondary school students as they explore their career interests by working with passionate working professionals and practitioners on the job.
Our cast, which comprised 12 kids aged between 16 and 18, went out into the world of work in July and August – armed with video cameras and ambition – to discover whether, in fact, their dream jobs would actually be all they imagined. For some kids, the experience was way more than they expected, for others their dream jobs sort of fell flat – throughout though, they discovered new skills and talents, and show us some of the work possibilities that exist for young people in Trinidad and Tobago.
My Dream Job! is a project of the Ministry of Education.