Vashti Harrison Experimental Film

Film and Video

My films and videos are documents of my ongoing investigation into my family and the Caribbean culture. My process features an emphasis on note-taking, a handmade quality and diaristic elements. Much of my work telescopes in on the places and moments where the natural and supernatural collide. My aesthetic is driven by magic.

Sixteen and FFTLOL at NOFF

Field Notes to show at Blackstar!

Field Notes Official Selection, Sixteen wins Best Documentary Short

New Short film to Premiere in Trinidad and Tobago

Field Notes has its UK Premiere

Field Notes at Rotterdam!

Forged from the Love of Liberty

A visual poem about a family a curse, and 2 superstitions that surround it.

16mm handprocessed HiCon and Tri-X

4:45, 16mm Transfer to HD, 2016

https://vimeo.com/169188952

Sixteen

Sixteen is my mother’s coming of age story. It is an exploration in memory and what time can change. The sound and image form a marriage between the past and the present in three layers: the story of a difficult childhood, the photos of a beautiful adulthood and the fragile cracking audio of a voice recounting these fading memories. These juxtapositions work simultaneously to tell the story of a coming of age that happened over the course of many years, but many years too late.

2015, 6:33, HD

https://vimeo.com/127703824

Field Notes

Field Notes is an experimental portrait of the ghosts embedded in the culture of the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The film is structured as a visual and aural field guide to the ghosts spirits and jumbies througout the island: from personal tales about shapeshifters and bloodsuckers, to the ghosts of Trinidads past. The film focuses on the places where the natural and supernatural collide.

“In her short film Field Notes (2014), artist Vashti Harrison explores Caribbean ghost stories and folk tales as told by her family members. Her approach to filmmaking is less an act of creating from pure imagination and more an act of capturing the eerie moments and stories that exist in real life. With a strong element of documentary provided by the handmade feel of the film, Field Notes sways whimsically between the real and the surreal.”

- Shotgun Review, Noé Gaytán

2014, 17:34 16mm