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Overview
Caribbean Studies in Video: The Banyan Archive provides access to more than 1,100 hours of both edited programs and unedited footage from Banyan Productions in Trinidad & Tobago.
Founded in 1974, Banyan Productions provided entertainment programs in the Caribbean. It featured a mixture of documentaries, drama and music entertainment, and social commentary for, about, and by the Caribbean people.
Provider
Details
Subject Areas
Resource Types
Major Languages
CRL Review
Collection Content
Caribbean Studies in Video: The Banyan Archive provides access to a unique array of cultural, historical and social content produced in the Caribbean by Caribbean people. Banyan developed out of a Trinidad & Tobago Television Workshop formed in 1974 dedicated to providing Trinidad & Tobago and the region with quality local television productions. It was the first independent television program production house in the southern Caribbean. The founders were deeply committed to developing the media, communication and film industries in Trinidad and Tobago, and productions which feature local content and themes. Exploring many formats: documentary, drama, public information, music and dance, Banyan consistently developed quality content with a distinct Caribbean voice. Banyan took advantage of trained video units throughout the Caribbean region and pioneered regional co-productions since the early 1980s to broaden and enrich the Caribbean-centric exploration of Caribbean thought and creativity.
The scope of the Archive’s more than 2,000 digital files with over 1,100 hours of edited programs and unedited footage is unparalled. The Alexander Street Press is now making this unique and invaluable archive of Caribbean culture accessible to educational institutions and libraries in streaming format for the first time. It is arguably the world’s largest digitized collection of Caribbean culture on video. Among the vast holdings are documentaries of performances of Orisha rituals in Trinidad; the Phagwa festival in Trinidad and Guyana; Junkanoo in Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Belize; La Marguerite and La Rose events in St. Lucia; and various Amerindian traditions in Guyana and Dominica. The Archive also encompasses hundreds of interviews with Caribbean artists such as writers C.L.R. James, George Lamming, and V.S. Naipaul, calypsonians Roaring Lion, Lord Kitchener, Lord Pretender, and David Rudder; visual artists Carlisle Chang, Ken Critchlow, and Christopher Cozier; and filmmakers Euzhan Palcy and Perry Hanzell.
Highlights of the Banyan Archive include:
CARIBBEAN EYE, 13 Episodes. 1992. Directed by Christopher Laird, Brude Paddington and Tony Hall. Thirteen areas of regional culture are surveyed from a Caribbean perspective. This series won the award for Best Series from the Caribbean Publishers and Broadcasting Association and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union. It was awarded a special jury prize by the Caribbean Community for its role in the Caribbean Integration Movement
EYE TO EYE – Ways of Seeing. 26 part Television series. 2010. Eye to Eye is a series of one on one conversations with people who work out of a strong sense of being Caribbean and what that means. The host is producer, Christopher Laird and among the guests are: Pat Bishop, Rubadiri Victor, Rawle Gibbons, Frances-Anne Solomon, Raviji, Kim Johnson, Pat Mohammed, Tony Hall, Raymond Ramcharitar, Sunity Maharaj, Marc Matthews, Christopher Cozier, Paul Keens-Douglas, Mungal Patasar, Brother Resistance (Lutalo Masimba), Ray Funk, Burton Sankerali, Lester Efebo Wilkinson, Wendell Manwarren, Georgia Popplewell, Tribute to Samantha Pierre, David Abdulah, Dennis Hall, Kumar Mahabir, Attilah Springer & Muhammad Muwakil, Errol Fabien
THE RIG. 90 minute drama – 1983. The Anglophone Caribbean's first 'made for TV movie'. Written and directed by Derek Walcott, The Rig explores the impact of the oil discoveries off the East Coast of Trinidad on the village life of the area and the society of Trinidad & Tobago in general through a story of international intrigue and local fantasy.
GAYELLE. Half hour weekly cultural magazine series - 1985 - 1992. Over 300 episodes of cultural television. Gayelle has been acclaimed at many international festivals and showings, it has served as a model for the creation of similar productions in the Caribbean, Central America and Canada and is used in television training institutes in the U.S. as an example of how exciting television can be made with simple resources.
THE DISH RAN AWAY WITH THE SPOON, One hour – 1992. Produced as part of the BBC/TVE Developing World series, Dish is a lively and entertaining sweep through the Caribbean looking at the effect of US television programming on local culture. Hosted by Gayelle hosts, Tony Hall and Errol Sitahal, Dish visits St. Lucia, Cuba and Miami. Winner of Best Video Documentary and Best Film on the Environment at Images Caraibes- Third Caribbean Film festival 1992 and Best Public Affairs Documentary at Prized Pieces, 13th Annual International Video and Film Festival of the National Black Programmers Consortium, Maryland, USA 1993
SARGASSO! A CARIBBEAN LOVE STORY directed by Michael Gilkes; produced by Michael Gilkes, University of the West Indies. Film Department, Page 2 Productions and Banyan Productions; performed by Val Cuffy, Charlene Benjamin and Rosamund Addo, 47 mins. Literature students have access to a dramatization of highlights of Jean Rhys’ classic novel .
Among the subjects featured in the collection are:
- Caribbean studies
- Black studies
- History
- Anthropology
- Sociology
- Religion
- Visual Arts
- Dance
- Music
- Literature
- Theater
- Media Studies
A title list for this collection can be found in the Appendix.
Delivery
Search
According to the editor, Isabel Lacerda, Alexander Street Press decided to launch Caribbean Studies in Video: The Banyan Archive with the full content live in the first release in order to make the “rare and incredible” content available immediately. The indexing to improve search will happen over the next few months. According to the editor:
“The deep indexing that has always been a hallmark of Alexander Street's attention to content, has often hindered our ability to bring new content quickly to patrons. It has not been uncommon for us to take a year or more to deliver a complete collection as we develop, and apply, by hand, very careful indexing. So Caribbean Studies in Video has, at launch, 150 hours of the best content already fully indexed. Each month we will add indexing to more videos until the collection is completely indexed. We believe the absence of full indexing at launch is more than outweighed by receiving access to the full archive on launch.”
The database will, eventually, allow a cross search of all films by: discipline, year, people discussed, place discussed, and language.
The landing page presents the user with a variety of options for searching the database including: browsing, keyword searching or advanced searching. The site has keyword searching with a search box on all pages located in the top navigation bar. The default search is a keyword search of the following fields: Author/Creator, Title and Series, Subjects, Transcripts and Notes. Boolean searches are supported in the keyword search. There is no spell check functionality.
The advanced search has search options ranging from title, author/creator, year released, discipline, language, and subtitle language.
Platform Functionality and Video Player
The Banyan Archive has the full functionality of the Alexander Street Press streaming media platform. Users can customize video content by creating playlists, containing various types of documents, whole videos, segments (clips) and/or other items such as links to any URL. Playlists can be annotated, edited, copied, shared, and all playlists contain their own unique permanent embeddable URL. Playlists can be used as lists of personal favorites, class viewing/listening assignments, or as a teaching resource for in-class use.
While viewing a film a “Make Clips” feature can be used to capture a segment of a film. The creator of the clip can use the drop-down menu to make it viewable only to themselves, to the entire institution or to everyone. There is the option to add notes or comments.
The platform provides excellent mobile options. You are able to send a link to your mobile phone using texting or a QR code. When using mobile options, you are sent a text that contains a link to the video that can be played without authentication for 24 hours.
Other features of the platform and its video player include
- Citation export
- Standard Usage Reporting via an admin portal, title-level reporting, and COUNTER4 compliance.
- Translations using Google translate on transcripts.
- Ability to expand the video to full screen and navigate from full screen mode
The video view is basic, containing a play/pause button, a scroll bar, an enlarge/smaller, and full screen buttons. When transcripts are available they are on the right side of the video. Users can click on text of the transcript and the video will go to that section. Likewise, scrolling through the video and playing at a certain point will update the transcripts to be at the same spot as the video. In addition to being synchronized to the video the transcripts are keyword-searchable. As the video plays, the transcript scrolls, and what's being spoken is highlighted.
Terms
This database is available as a subscription or a one-time purchase. The one-time purchase is available through CRL.
Licensing
Alexander Street Press is handling the licensing for this offer directly with CRL members. A Standard License Agreement is available. Please note that this is simply a sample license agreement, and the vendor has indicated it's agreeable to changing the language based on the circumstances and parties entering in to the agreement (i.e. state required language). Therefore, the license signed by members directly with ASP may differ.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength is in the content itself: an amazing array of audio-visual source material documenting Caribbean thought and culture without outside mediation or interpretation. It gives the productions a compelling immersiveness that is intellectually engaging and capable of challenging perceptions and viewpoints. The Banyan Archive gives voice to the cultural complexities of the Caribbean region, which should spark discussion, and possibly upset established discourses. The collection will be of interest to a broad range of disciplines, such as History, Anthropology, Sociology, Religion, Visual Arts, Dance, Music, Literature, Theater, and Cinema Studies. Alexander Street Press has related collections that enhance the research value of the Banyan Archive, such as Caribbean Literature, Black Short Fiction, Black Thought and Culture, and Black Drama.
Although the Banyan Archive includes significant content covering the non-English speaking Caribbean, it is weak in its coverage of the Caribbean beyond the English speaking Eastern Caribbean.
Reviewers
Angela M. Carreño – Head of Collection Development, New York University
Endnotes
SOURCES
Sources for this review include information publicly posted or gathered directly from the product.
Isabel Lacerda, a Senior Licensing Editor at Alexander Street Press, reviewed and confirmed the accuracy of the Delivery section.
Information on the Banyan Archive is available from a direct source, Chistopher Laird, a co-founder of Banyan Limited and cultural force behind the archive. See –
https://vimeo.com/133565760
Information on the history of Banyan is covered in one of the productions included in Caribbean Studies in Video titled History of Banyan produced in 2013.
Appendix
Title List
The Banyan Archive Title List
(175.51 KB)
Community Ratings
Content scope and completeness
Cost and price-structure
Platform and user interface