ROBERT YAO RAMESAR IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER AND LECTURER in film at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine campus. On 14 April 2011, I sat down with him after one of his lectures at the Arcon II Studio, School of Education - the first home of the UWI St Augustine's BA in Film Programme. During this first interview, we talked about his film Sistagod (2006), discussing his sources of inspiration, his approach to filmmaking and his views on Trinidad and Tobago filmmaking.Nearly four years later, on 14 January 2015, a few months after the world premiere of Ramesar's latest film Haiti Bride (2014) at the 2014 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, I sat down once again with the filmmaker, now coordinator of the UWI's Film Programme, in its home, the Film Building on Carmody Street, St Augustine, where the film was first officially screened to a public audience. In this second interview, we discussed the latest stage of his filmmaking journey, the challenges he had to overcome while making Haiti Bride, the correlation between his films, and the reception of his films by the Trinidad and Tobago audience.Presented below is a synthesis of these two interviews. I have edited and reorganised some of the material thematically; however, the words are Ramesar's.Poon Chong: What was the inspiration behind Sistagod?Ramesar: Sistagod is a trilogy that [fore]tells the [coming] of a black female messiah. It came from a dream that I had in 1986 where a black woman came to me saying that she was the Messiah and that the world of humanity will come to an end and she would be the sole survivor - but she would be with child and therefore she was going to redeem the new world.Pretty much I thought about Eve and the original Bantu woman whose DNA survived, and scientists say that human-kind [sprang] from her particular loins and DNA - so she is the original Eve. So, I think that the future of the human race would emerge again from one sole black woman - and that is where the basis of Sistagod came from. What I did was that I woke up from that dream and I wrote for seventy-two hours straight [to complete the first draft of Sistagod].Poon Chong: Why did you wait ten years, 1986 to 2006, to make the film?Ramesar: The nature of the films that I make, which are not the typical Hollywood rip-offs and cheap imitations of our neo-colonialist masters, means that I do not attract much funding. So, it took me a long time to work in the trenches and build up some capital to finance it largely on my own.Poon Chong: What was your inspiration for Haiti Bride? How was the idea developed?Ramesar: The idea for Haiti Bride also came up in a dream. I was in Barbados making a Chinese co-production, when the earthquake struck Haiti. I was truly devastated, and became very concerned about the people that I knew there - were they alive? I felt truly horrible with the amount of death and destruction there. Haiti has had its back against the wall for a very long time - that is the price of liberation. The French kept them poor - and it is very rough for this to happen to them.I was in the middle of directing this co-production and was unable to move - I too felt stuck. Then I had a dream, where I saw this bride and groom in the ruins of this church, in their church clothes - and this eventually became the motif of Haiti Bride. So I came up with the story, where the earthquake happens on the day set for the wedding between Marie-Therese and Paul. The bride is late and everything comes down on the groom, who is standing there in the church.Poon Chong: Is there any link between Haiti Bride and Sistagod?Ramesar: There is no direct link between Haiti Bride and Sistagod. However, you would recognise that both films have very strong black female protagonists. Symbolically, Mari [Sistagod] is seen wearing a white baby doll costume, with references to almost being like a wedding dress, and the baby doll white mask, which is like the veil (see Figure 1). …