POSSIBLE LANDSCAPES

AN ENQUIRY INTO ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE

Caribbean Landscapes and Everyday Life
An Enquiry into Environmental Experience

Possible Landscapes is a poignant exploration of intergenerational experiences of landscape and environmental transformation in the Caribbean. Shot across two seasons in Trinidad and Tobago, the film immerses viewers in sugarcane fields, winding mountain valleys, and pristine seas that mask the devastation of dying coral reefs and takes them through unfinished homes that stretch into oil fields and fishing communities that struggle against the ravages of the Atlantic. Through intimate portraits of people navigating their daily lives, Possible Landscapes weaves together landscapes, personal memories and narratives, examining the lasting impacts of colonial legacies, post-independence aspirations, and the evolving forces of extractivism. As the Caribbean faces escalating environmental crises, the film captures the tensions of post-independence aspirations and disappointments, legacies of colonialism and postcolonial nationalism, and changing forms of extractvism, offering a profound meditation on resilience, loss, and the changing face of the land.

The Genesis of “Possible Landscapes”
A Collaborative Research Project

A collaboration between a documentary filmmaker, Kannan Arunasalam and two professors, Tao DuFour (Architecture) a spatial theorist and Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature) a postcolonial comparatist and student of Caribbean thought, Possible Landscapes is the outcome of the team research project, “Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago,” funded through a grant from Cornell University’s Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge and the Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative.

Kannan Arunasalam - documentary filmmaker
Tao DuFour - Architecture - spatial theorist
Natalie Melas - Comparative Literature - postcolonial comparatist

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Researching “Possible Landscapes” Methods, Aims, and Historical Inquiry

The Possible Landscapes research project set out to develop methods of field research and representation, drawing on the visual and narrative resources of documentary film, that foreground intergenerational lived experience of landscapes and environments in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and to query the formation of environmental and climate imaginaries, with a view to getting at larger historical questions—of migration, plantation societies, extractivism, the legacies of colonialism and post-independence struggles—that inform everyday practices in ways that are difficult to identify and to articulate, because they are concretely lived.