St. John Artist’s Work Featured at Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival

 

The Virgin Islands was represented in the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival which opened September 19 at Queen’s Hall, St. Ann’s in Port of Spain.

St. John artist Janet Cook-Rutnik’s video, “Moments in Time,” will be shown in the series entitled “Ritual and Movement” on September 26 at Medulla Art Gallery in Woodbrook.

Moments in Time shows images of the timeless beauty of the night sky with quotes from Columbus’s Diaries of 1493, which illustrate the common threads running through the last five centuries which have been dominated by changes that are man made but have not destroyed the initial impression made on Columbus and those who come here for the first time.

The diaries also reveal the violence and treachery inherent in the history of the Caribbean that parallel today’s news. 

This video first appeared in the “Paradise Lost” exhibition at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in St. Croix in the Fall of 2010 and at AREA in Caguas, PR in May of 2011.

Other videos that the artist has made include “Rock/Transfer”, a collaboration with VI filmmaker, William Stelzer, which has been shown in film festivals and exhibitions in Jakarta, Indonesia, Barbados and Santo Domingo, DR. 

Another video by Cook-Rutnik, “Our Father” was shown in New Media Fest 2010 in Cologne, Germany. These videos and others by local Virgin Islands producers have also been shown in the VIP Mini Film Festival presented bi-annually in 2010 and 2012 at the St. John School of the Arts. More information about the film festival is available on line under Arc Magazine or Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival.