For Immediate Release

KINGSTON PARADISE MOVIE, COMING SOON.

" Mirror, Mirror on the wall your choices matter first of all"

The Kingston Paradise film is a new, début feature by award winning Jamaican/US filmmaker, Mary Wells. It follows a young man in a whirlwind of survival and robbery. It's a quirky film for the World Cinema lover and it reflects on the choices that we make, while telling the ongoing story of the broken dreams and aspirations of our youth and how they're linked to an island's persistent rising crime and violence because of its social inequalities. The basic needs and aspirations of the people have not been met and in the hopelessness that prevails, a fantasy world permeates as the urban youth of contemporary Jamaica no longer care, like Urban youth anywhere. So what's new?

The Kingston Paradise movie is an off beat action crime drama that brings a very different view of life in the capital city, Kingston, where every character fails 'gangster 101' and isn't quite the cliché. A rich layered story, its a powerful journey that promises to leave audiences deeply moved as it takes us through the chaotic violent lives of disenfranchised youth in Jamaica. It follows the familiar, yet starkly different and precarious journey of small time hustler Rocksy, who yearns for quick bucks as his immediate dream steals a fancy car to sell its profitable parts, but fails to secure an order to collect the prize. While his prostitute lady friend Rosie, dreams to 'get out' and to find a peaceful life and its only from viewing a watercolour painting that she manages to mentally escape. When the crime is committed the journey is a senseless bad to worse that changes both their lives dramatically, forever.

It's played among a cast and crew of wonderful young people with many first timers but The lead, a Chris Daley, is a well known and very talented local actor from Jamaica's theatre community. Both Written, Directed and Produced by the filmmaker, who has made films for over twenty years, such as documentaries and short dramas mostly for the Caribbean she says, "Kingston Paradise is a very important story and is a very important film from an artistic point of view. It has also been extremely important from a personal learning experience. To date, its been quite a journey. Although the editing is now complete, I'm still raising funds for its professional finish. For a black international niche film, it's not only viable, its set for something truly special."

The film hopes to grab Caribbean audiences, but most importantly the large crossover international audiences, both young and older adults, particularly in urban centres that appreciate the gritty images of the real Caribbean. And who too, may have to weigh their options and consider changes in their individual lives and not reinforce a rotten social system. We as human beings have a strength of spirit; we have it within us to dream, to hope and to do better. Kingston Paradise shows the ongoing struggles and humiliation of a people and is A WICKED REMINDER of who we really are. In a colourful take, it's a gut wrenching off-beat film, COMING SOON.

conversations with myself...

Nov 3, 2011

It's 2:41 am.  And the sleep deprivation is on.  I must glow in the dark like the pyramid in the photo. Its a cool moonlight night and everything feels numb, deaf, blind... speechless.  if it rained, oh so gently, even drizzled, i could melt.  I'd like to melt like ice into a tiny puddle of pure water.  crystal clear i would slide and drip off the road, the sidewalk into a bank.  Banks are nice.  grassy, quiet and invisible.  i'm invissible. I feel invisssible.  sighh, i better go to bed now.  the  mystery of the night wares on and the cone of paradise chokes my very mind.  i'm lost.  so sleep now, sleep. may peace be with me as i sleep and wake to see another night.  another day?  no, not another day, another night please.  the night is silent and magical.  special and wise.  may the shadows and the grays always remain, may the complexity of life continue, may i hold steadfast on this beautiful journey to complete a film... .  

 

 

FILM The voice of an artist, the voice of a woman.

A Letter to Caribbean artists in film.

Leh me tell yuh how it is man:

If I want to reach
And catch a falling star
Just for so
want to be a Moko Jumbie
Walking stilts taller
Than the CN Tower
Mapping the moon with fingertips
Surfing tsunamis
or being
Just plain old Prime Minister
want to skate the olympics
Ride backwards into TIme
and forward into space
A time go come
Mark me    when
Jumbie self eh go stop mih!

I and I
Warrier-woman
Guerilla Fighter,
Sooth Sayer, Sootra Dhara
Scheherazade,
I tell a new story
For a new time
Weaving the threads of knowing
Together       for a design
Lovely as a tadjah

From SHAY’S ROBBERTALK by Ramabai Espinet

Filmmakers of the Caribbean

I want to engage you in a discussion about INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Women of the Caribbean

How many of your creative film voices are now being heard on film?

I mean - Women as filmmaking poets, as master creators of audio visual high art, digital works that reach into the souls of nations and draw huge audiences.

Have we even begun to place these shapes and sounds into the market place of audio visual wares?

Count them. Cherish them. I am one such voice, I have that calling and power, I demand that place, that right. 

Say/do what you like, I will make my film, my mark, my way, my right.

You all will hear me, cheer me, support me, trust me, believe me, RESPECT ME.

It won't be any other way.

The soul of a people will respond

All you who try to control and own me will shrivel like dry prune cause you are empty.

Satan's vultures : Move on!

I am the creator, the writer, the director, the one by whom this film is made - the Producer, the Overseer - the "Executive Producer".

My film will be what I see inside my mind's eye, live the life I breathe into it, be my child.

How ironic that the voices that seek to control and deny me the right to tell my own story are African American voices. Be that as it may. Brothers, have you not experience of your tongues being cut out your genitals being excised to silence your voice. And yet you want to take mine.

You think you are better? Because you are Ameri-can? What power or voice do U have in America? None.

You claim to have  copyright on "commercial"? What commercial experience or success do you have in "Hamerica" ? None.

GO ON

To besides, what do you know about my country, Jamaica, my terrain, Caribbean ? What right you have to tell me what commercial means where I live, who my audience is, or what it likes? Before I even start to tell my story! What gives you right to dictate and overule me, simply because you are "Hamurican"!  NONE.

I going to make my film.

It will be wildly successful. It will have huge audience.

I know what I am doing. Trust me.

 

A Film by Mary Wells

In a funky cult flick, like street dogs frantic to survive, small time hustler Rocksy, (a taxi driver/part-time pimp), with his prostitute friend Rosie dream of something different, a real life, a future.  On the peeling walls of their tenement, Rosie prominently places a painting she owns that gives them both hope and something tangible to cling to. 

Its an exotic beach view of another more peaceful world, but they exist miles and worlds a part. So with his friend and cohort Malt, Rocksy eyes a fancy sports car nearby and together they devise a plot to steal it to sell for parts. This may change their lives immediately. It belongs to a local Lebanese businessman, Faris, but the plot is risky and not well thought out.  Rosie is dead set against it and fed up.  She dreams for the beach view, she wants out, out of being entangled and out of the life.  But she's bait and Rocksy cannot manage without her.  When she finally leaves Rocksy becomes even more desperate and devastated.  He does the unthinkable.  In the Chaos, something changes within him, something rises and like the sun, it sets.  In the context and contrasts of the Jamaican landscape its backstory is political, as the current embedded system doesnt allow for change

The Journey

The journey of art and respect.  Film is a very beautiflul commercial medium and a tiny film out of Jamaica was born to create the viable commercial possibility of art for the sake of art and to tell a story that literally highlights its developing world characters in the midst of their journey, pain and poverty.  It's also to tell a story with a purpose and with meaning, to show struggle and humiliation.  It's a hustlers dream for a beach fantasy from a painting and he commits a crime to get there, which changes his life dramatically, forever.

In a funky cult flick, like street dogs frantic to survive, small time hustler Rocksy, (a taxi driver/part-time pimp), with his prostitute friend Rosie dream of something different, a real life, a future.  On the peeling walls of their tenement, Rosie prominently places a painting she owns that gives them both hope and something tangible to cling to.  Its an exotic beach view of another more peaceful world, but they exist miles and worlds a part. So with his friend and cohort Malt, Rocksy eyes a fancy sports car nearby and together they devise a plot to steal it to sell for parts. This may change their lives immediately. It belongs to a local Lebanese businessman, Faris, but the plot is risky and not well thought out.  Rosie is dead set against it and fed up.  She dreams for the beach view, she wants out, out of being entangled and out of the life.  But she's bait and Rocksy cannot manage without her.  When she finally leaves Rocksy becomes even more desperate and devastated.  He does the unthinkable.  In the Chaos, something changes within him, something rises and like the sun, it sets.  In the context and contrasts of the Jamaican landscape its backstory is political, as the current embedded system doesnt allow for change