f Paria - Ins and Outs of Trinidad & Tobago 2013

Meet
a Trini
Barbie Jardine — Barbara Jardine’s recognition in
the film The Solitary Alchemist mirrors the success of T&T’s budding
film industry.
by Desirée McEachrane
Poster Image by Laura Ferreira/graphic design by Anya Ayoung Chee
Slim, unaffected with a shock of spiky
blonde, Barbara Jardine’s T&T roots aren’t
visible to most of us, even though she
was born here. A master-level goldsmith
trained in Britain, Jardine speaks with a
British accent. As a jeweler, her art isn’t
as accessible as the paintings displayed
on the wall of the Queen’s Park Oval or
the International Financial Centre. But for
more than twenty years, Jardine has lived
and worked in Trinidad, using Caribbean
materials like wood, turtle shell, coral and
beetle wings, along with the traditional
gold, silver and copper, to craft her
hauntingly unique work.
Her motifs are also strikingly West
Indian. In Memoriam, which she fashioned
as a tribute to her late mother, is morbid,
tenderly erotic and tropical—a gold pin
atop which, a bright blood-red anthurium
lily and a black coral skull are entwined; a
piece bubbling with strong emotion shaped
in art. In The Solitary Alchemist, which
won Best Local Film at the 2009 Trinidad
and Tobago Film festival, film producer
Mariel Brown intimately captures Jardine’s
complex artist’s soul in a narrative that
relates to a surprisingly wide audience.
“Big hard-back men, the younger
generation who had no idea who I was,
artists have been empowered by what
they see as me and my life, which actually
has been a very humdrum, quiet little life.
Mariel has made it look exciting,” said
Jardine.
As often happens in smaller countries,
local screenplay writers, directors and
producers have always struggled to
generate local film and television content to
compete with the international markets for
the local audience. But the annual Trinidad
and Tobago Film Festival shows that local
stakeholders like the Trinidad and Tobago
Film Company (TTFC) have been doing
well at opening dialogue between local
filmmakers and private enterprise sponsors,
since these partnerships have been proven
to boost the local film industry. Attendance
66 The Ins & Outs of Trinidad and Tobago