Lights dimmed as students shifted forward in their seats, eyes fixed on the colorful opening frames of “Lakay.” Produced by CalArts and directed by Zoë Gray, this film explores themes surrounding Haitian culture, diaspora and home.
On April 4, Pomona College’s Office of Black Student Affairs (OBSA) hosted the Caribbean Film Fest Short Film Showcase at Claremont McKenna College’s McKenna Auditorium from 2 to 4 p.m. The screening, part of a two-week-long festival organized in collaboration with student groups including the 5C Black Caribbean and Latin American Club (BLACC), the Pomona Black Student Union (BSU) and Chicano Latino Student Affairs (CLSA), featured a curated lineup of short films from across the Caribbean and its diaspora. Now in its third year, the showcase drew in approximately 30 attendees from across the 5Cs.
The festival was established in 2023 in response to the lack of student-run organizations showcasing Caribbean culture.
“We noticed that there was kind of a hole in the 5C community for Caribbean students,” co-founder of the Caribbean Film Festival, Isaiah Dawson PO ’26, said. “I think it’s really important that you can see yourself vicariously in the film, or if you can’t, you can understand and relate to the experiences.”
As one of the organizers, Dawson explained that they aimed to expand this year’s festival from a one-week program to two weeks of events to increase accessibility. Rather than positioning the showcase as a space only for those who identify with Caribbean culture, they designed it as an event centered on community and films, so students with no prior knowledge of the culture or a specific identity could participate and learn more about Caribbean traditions. Through this accessible format, OBSA strived to make Caribbean-focused programming a visible and recurring part of campus life.
“If we host a film fest, then we’ll have a better opportunity of getting anybody who’s interested in learning about Caribbean culture,” Dawson said. “And also finding people who are a part of it and just want some kind of space for it.”
The program opened with the film “Lakay,” which grounded the showcase in a diasporic reflection of Haiti. After this first short film, “El First Date (2021),” a Puerto Rican short that explores teenage relationships through humor. From there, “Niña Linda” followed a young Dominican American as she navigated her identity and relationship with religion across cultural boundaries, highlighting the lived realities of diaspora.
The films varied both stylistically and thematically: from “Jamaica No Ja Makai,” an anime-inspired cartoon, to ”Jab Jab,” which highlighted Grenadian Carnival practices. The program culminated with a documentary segment on “playing mas” — a prominent part of Trinidad and Tobago’s annual Carnival, where festival-goers dress in elaborate, colorful costumes and dance through the streets from sunup to sundown. The film brought the festival’s origins and meaning to the forefront, portraying it as a practice rooted in identity and collective expression.
“[The array of films] was supposed to show the diversity of the Caribbean beyond what people here usually understand,” dean and director of OBSA, Lydia Middleton, said. “There’s always that association with carnival or a vacation destination, but there’s a lot of rich history and culture, much of it connected to colonization and enslavement.”
For Middleton, that goal extends beyond representation alone, as the screening aimed to attract students from diverse cultural backgrounds. Working with groups like CLSA and Pomona BSU, organizers were able to reach students who may not have initially sought out Caribbean-focused programming.
With that broader audience in mind, they privileged stories grounded in everyday life, humor and celebration. Rather than reinforcing familiar images of the Caribbean, the lineup deliberately moved across histories and cultural customs that are often left out of mainstream media.
“We wanted the overall film to be more joyous,” co-founder of Caribbean Film Festival Se’maj Griffin PO ’26 said. “There are a lot of great educational films about slavery or discrimination, but we wanted students to come and see their culture represented properly, in a great way.”
The films wove in themes of migration, religion and cultural inheritance, alongside moments of intimacy, creating a fuller picture of Caribbean identity and deepening the audience’s understanding of experiences that are often reduced to cultural stereotypes.
“Now I can have better conversations with my friends,” Griffin said. “When someone says they’re going to play mas, I understand what they mean.”
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