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