“An amazing short film”
IMDb, 23rd April 2015
The Caribbean is bursting with unsung heroes whose stories and accomplishments will never be acknowledged then soon forgotten. Filmmaker Mariel Brown brilliantly re-animates the visually stunning the world of John Rawlins, through the voice of his son Richard and his cleverly crafted miniatures. John Rawlins was a great man with a simple dream who went on to create a world when realizing his dreams, however straight forward and simple, were not so easy achieve.
“Mariel Brown’s ‘Smallman’ touching tale, visual triumph (Trinidad and Tobago)”
Robot Mango Reviews, 13th June 2016
Have you ever sat with someone and listened to them talk about their deceased parent? This is the basic premise of Smallman: The World My Father Made (2013), a documentary short by Trinidad and Tobago director Mariel Brown. The film had its world premiere at the 2013 Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and has also been screened at The People’s Film Festival (NYC), Pan African Film Festival (Los Angeles), Black Harvest Film Festival (Chicago), and the Caribbean Tales International Film Festival (Toronto), where it won the award for best short film.
“Smallman on AfroPop“
Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 29th June 2014
Viewers have until July 23 to watch T&T filmmaker Mariel Brown’s short documentary Smallman on the US National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) Web series AfroPoP: the Ultimate Cultural Exchange: Caribbean Shorts.Smallman was one of four Caribbean films curated for the Caribbean Shorts series. The film’s Web site describes it thusly: “Smallman is Richard Mark Rawlins’ personal exploration of the real and imagined worlds that his father, Kenwyn, made in the workshop beneath their house.” The ten-minute short is based on Rawlins’s e-book about his father.
“Four little films”
Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 5th October 2013
Another standout for me was a short directed by Mariel Brown. In just about ten minutes, I was nearly reduced to a blubbering mass of sentimentality. Based on the e-book written by Richard Rawlins, Smallman, The World My Father Made was a delightful story told (not narrated) by Richard about his father Kenwyn Rawlins.
“Arthouse in the Caribbean: The Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival 2013”
Filmmaker Magazine, 8th October 2013
His wife Mariel Brown’s Smallman: The World My Father Made screened as well, though in the fest’s shorts section. Smallman is a sweet tribute that features Richard discussing his late dad Kenwyn, who worked a civil servant day job and spent off hours in his basement workshop – where he handcrafted a parallel world of dollhouses, miniature toys and model ships.
A Legally Black Blog
With the assistance of director of photography Sean Edghill, [director] Mariel Brown allows the camera to go deep into Kenwyn’s lilliputian world of miniatures and models with extensive usage of macro photography. I really got a sense of the meticulous detail placed on these creations, which made me truly appreciate the time, care and effort put into creating them. These items, displayed in the source material in black-and-white photos, are transposed on-screen with vibrant colours and excellent shot composition.
BlackPublicMedia.org
Mariel Brown’s short, Smallman tells the story of John Ambrose Kenwyn Rawlins, an ordinary man of modest means with a gift for making extraordinary, creative objects. With a skill that went largely unrecognized — outside his immediate family and friends — in his lifetime, Rawlins had the ability to imagine entire worlds, orchestrating scenes and settings which afforded him a universe of freedom that eluded him in his real, day-to-day life. Valerie Williams-Sanchez “A Small Life With Grand Visions”
BC Pires, Writer. (Pires has been writing about film from an informed lay perspective for 25 years.)
You could turn the sound off and still love Mariel Brown’s Smallman because its first success is as a film, and it is overwhelmingly beautiful to look at; to call it “other worldly” is no exaggeration. The sound, though, adds the human dimension to the art as Richard Rawlins remembers his father and the world he made for them both, the one Mariel has remade for us all. This is a small film with a grand scale and a wide sweep. If you don’t remember the best parts of your own childhood – and, indeed, your father – have your humanity levels checked.
Newsday, October 28th 2013
“In the end, the film turns out to be about the creative process and the role it plays in self-actualisation… It is a touching and beautiful film with… ravishing cinematography.” Andre Bagoo