About
Bird’s Eye View Productions creates independent narrative films, documentary films and multimedia projects in Trinidad and Tobago to educate and entertain audiences presenting Caribbean stories to regional and international markets.
We are a member of the Trinidad and Tobago National Registry of Artists and Cultural Workers, this provides a number of concessions and incentives to our customers and production investors.
As a vehicle for the exploration of diversity in the human experience, our productions focus on social and environmental issues, including gender equity, climate change and at risk community empowerment. We aim to bring the viewer into worlds where they can experience places, people and issues anew.
Our lens is a sensitive and reflexive one, aware of its position, its interaction and its representation. The process of experiencing and communicating thus aim to be a multidimensional exploration for both the filmmaker and the audience.
Who's Involved
Photo by: Kevin Huggins
RHONDA CHAN SOO
MANAGING DIRECTOR | BIRD’S EYE VIEW PRODUCTIONS
Rhonda Chan Soo is a Trinidadian documentary filmmaker. She earned a combination of merit-based scholarships which allowed her to pursue her undergraduate studies at a small, liberal arts college in Greenville, South Carolina. There, various threads began to interweave and coalesce into her pursuit of a career in documentary film.
After earning a BSc in Environmental Science from Furman University, and Master of Arts in Documentary Film from Wake Forest University, Rhonda worked as a multimedia fellow at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Birmingham, Alabama, thereafter returning home to Trinidad and Tobago. She worked as a producer on the narrative feature film Moving Parts (2017), a drama humanising the experiences of trafficking survivors, which was directed by Emilie Upczak, the founding director of Bird’s Eye View Productions.
Rhonda has been the Managing Director of Bird’s Eye View Productions since 2018, and has kept the social issue tradition of the company alive, further moulding it with her creative voice. Her work is informed by empathy, a desire for justice and equality, and a critical practice that acknowledges her own positionality as a POC woman from the Global South. In her work, Rhonda is interested in exploring social issues, environment and culture and aims to explore our diverse and multifaceted identity – who we are as Trinbagonian and Caribbean people, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going – highlighting the ingenuity of our people to confront our issues head-on, to remember and celebrate our triumphs, and to work together for a more just and inclusive community in which the voices of the underrepresented, the marginalized and the vulnerable are empowered and heard alongside those that have been historically more advantaged.
Rhonda has been successfully building a strong and cohesive team at Bird’s Eye View Productions to continue this work of bringing stories from marginalized communities to the mainstream and with dignity.
Photo by: Brandon Kalyan
ARNALDO JAMES
DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY | BIRD’S EYE VIEW PRODUCTIONS
Honouring the ingenuity and resistance of Black peoples in a world-structure actively pursuing their exploitation, Arnaldo James works towards equity and prosperity. Centring sustainability and feminism in his endeavours, he organises safe spaces for collaboration and community building. A graduate of the University of the West Indies and Cardiff Metropolitan University, James earned an MSc in Advanced Product Design, Postgraduate Diploma in Art and Cultural Enterprise Management and BA in Visual Art.
James project manages and co-leads creative direction to Bird’s Eye View Productions where he shapes the operations structure and business strategies; as well as project design and implementation. He has 12 years of practice in the creative industries, 7 years in media and design education, project and operations management experience in the private and non-profit sectors. James holds certificates in NGO Management, Monitoring and Evaluation, Project Management and Leadership. He is also a member of the Artist and Cultural Workers Registry of Trinidad and Tobago.
As a graphic designer he developed material for the Trinidad and Tobago Theatre Workshop, his alma mater the University of the West Indies, and designs for the Office of the Prime Minister – Communications Division. His photographic works have exhibited within and outside of the Caribbean including commercial content for enterprises such as the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, The Cloth Caribbean and North Eleven Ltd. His images are in numerous publications including UWI Today, Draconian Switch, Caribbean Beat and the book Route to Roots by Dr Adeola Dewis.
The major project of his MSc in Advanced Product Design, drew from his passion for imaging, he developed marker clusters used with optical motion capture systems. Those marker clusters provide the Cardiff School of Sport with an eco-effective research tool that improves the accuracy of data collection at a reduced expense.
James’ curation includes the mature animation event Dark Night, film screenings for the Animae Caribe Festival, the ongoing project Mission Black Satellite and the exhibition I Am Citizen. In 2017 he was jointly awarded the James W Ray Venture Project Award and in 2021 the Caribbean Development Bank’s CIIF Biennial prize. His exhibition with Christopher Paul Jordan In the Interim: Ritual Ground for a Future Black Archive showed from February to May 2022 at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle USA and he’s developing Compassionate States, a collaborative artwork exploring the impacts of statelessness on Indigenous and LGBTQIA Caribbean peoples
Photo by: Kevin Huggins
EMILIE UPCZAK
FOUNDING DIRECTOR | BIRD’S EYE VIEW PRODUCTIONS
Emilie Upczak is an independent filmmaker, originally from Boulder, she spent ten years developing her practice while living in Trinidad and Tobago. Emilie returned to Colorado to release her debut narrative feature, Moving Parts, which premiered at the Denver Film Festival and has gone on to play to receptive audiences internationally. Emilie holds an MFA in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a Rotterdam Producers Lab and EAVE Producer alumni and an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant recipient. Emilie is a producer on Nearest Neighbours; she is also in development on her second narrative feature film, to be set in the Grand Canyon. Emilie is a lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts.