Kingston Paradise in Toronto.

St. Jago de la Vega and Kingston had not yet met in their prophesized sprawling merger. Growing up in Jamaica, my cardiology would routinely spike on the commute between bucolic and bustle. To the extent that even now, there's nothing better for my heart than a hit of citypulse.
 
My latest sortie saw me emerge from a summers-end Muskoka sequestration. A few probing enquiries, and I headed for Hogtown's TIFF 2013. In this era we're still speaking about that cavalcade of prestigious cinematic unveilings, and the familiar frenzy of the red carpet.

But now, also, parallel fledgling festivals aligned with it.

The Caribbean Tales Film Festival occurs on the fringes of this frisson. The timing is advantageous to showcase the maturing output of Caribbean related filmwork, adding its own diasporic glam to the scene with contiguous scheduling and spicy spectacle. Shorts, docs, features, workshops and symposia.

TIFF Artistic Director, media-master, mogul, mullah Cameron Bailey, himself of Barbadian heritage, makes a natural patron and ally for the eight year-old CTFF, incepted and run by Frances-Anne Solomon, a proud Trinidadian film-maker.

Having missed sold-out TIFF screenings of Steve McQueen's acclaimed "12 Years a Slave," which ended up a clear winner of the top accolades, I had to re-focus. I was drawn out by a desire to see how my Jamaican friend, Mary Wells fared with her movie "Kingston Paradise," making its world premiere.

Five years prior we had pored over early footage as she shaped a working edit. At the time, final cut seemed ... remote.

In the tradition of Damian Marley's anthemic song "Welcome To Jamrock," Mary's cinema verité visuals of this island paradise bely the Iberostar propaganda of Tourist Board commercials.

And make no mistake, this isn't gratuitous invitation to indulge in ghetto-voyeurism or re-hash Jamaican political tribalism.

At core, this is about a couple's struggle for self-betterment. A capitalist's dream in a setting where there's little capital to go 'round. Driving taxi in this town requires more than a hackney permit. Chris "Johnny" Daley energetically portrays Rocksy. He hustles condoms and phone-cards but is readily seduced by a Syrian businessman's conspicuously crisp Mitsubishi Evolution.

Hollywood might've required a grand heist, but JAH-llywood finds gold in a petty auto-thief, complete with bumbling sidekick.

Camille Small, as Rosie, is Rocksy's main squeeze, complicit in methodology but not end-game. She's an art-lover and supporter of "woman work" who is not deferential to agressive testosterone. Unlike some of her predecessors in Jamaican cinema, Camille manages to infuse Rosie's pulchritude with an eloquent subtlety.

Everyone's heard of Trenchtown. Well, there are several comparable "garrisons" on the Kingston city grid. Mary credits gratitude to the people of Southside, which is in East Kingston.

 

Here, shambles of a once-grand downtown show systemic neglect, and every available space is adapted to accomodate the population therein. Supporting players are shrewdly utilised to rivetingly depict the day-to-day business of survival.

In the mechanics yard, gappy Clovie ("I thief but I never go jail") and pretty-boy Maltado deserve mention. So too does the ambiguous, dare I say, androgeny of the marginal players. During a prolonged de rigeur cop chase sequence one delivers, sans dialogue, haven for our hero, and the other nails what may be the most stylish onscreen come-uppance I can remember.

Wisely, Mary avoids padding the dialogue with cliche epithets and common themology. My Spidey-sense is that there was imput from her actors to this end. The result is believable dialogue which, of necessity, benefits from subtitling in service of the colloquial narrative. This allows the viewer to digest the all-consuming socio-economic reality at his/her own pace.

In Kingston, there's no avoiding this.

 

Perry Henzell's "The Harder They Come" (1972) will always serve as a blueprint. To this day THTC one-line take-aways pepper popular culture. Kingston Paradise has its share of those too, with at least one standout deadpan delivery certain to mash up movie-houses from Kingston to Toronto. 

 

Then of course there's the music. Award winning composer John Welsman, an honorary Caribbean if there ever was one, dials up the decibels. Combining original score and contemporary vocal tracks, this Canadian demonstrates a clear understanding of Jamaica's bass imperative.

The first thing Mary asked me after the well-received screening, which led to the all-important CTFF 2013 audience choice award, was - what do I think of the film's commercial prospects?

Well, after driving around Kingston with her, not too long ago, I do know she could use a new car.

I predict here and now, she won't have to steal one.

... welcome to Parkdale! ...

... I've had opportunities to be part of many different types of projects in my time as an actor ... I can attribute much of that blessing to a combination of good fortune, genetics and effort ...

... oftentimes I'm questioned as to whether I fear the dreaded "typecasting"... my responses alternate between the flippant "bring it on!," or a post-Jerry Maguire "show me the money!," and the quizzical, mild annoyance of a "whaddyamean, which type are you referring to?" ... I've come to believe this is related to my personal flava, hybrid accent and mannerisms ...

... y'see, my personal blend of youth and age, public and private schooling, urban and rural upbringings, "dread" and "baldhead" influences, Jamaican and Canadian world citizenships, isn't usually the character description in the casting breakdowns, yet happily, I've managed to play a few variations on this theme ...

... and then there are the rare, though not entirely unique, instances when a role gets crafted toward the mongrel in me ...









... the initial phone call was innocuous enough ...

... my friend Michele and her filmmaker cousin Frances-Anne had a really talented cast, a concept and a plan, plus the fortitude to combine them ... they proposed adding me to play the central character Gene Wright, a well-meaning social worker with challenges and shortcomings of his own ...

... the open aperture beckoned, and before long I was deep in development-workshops on the grittier end of Queen Street West, a place with notable population history and not enough to show for it ... welcome to Parkdale and long days spent brainstorming, improvising scenarios and bonding into a tight unit ... a workably representative cross-section of contemporary black Toronto ...







... collectively we evolved a living script ... the contribution from each player inhabits the textured nuances of the final product ...

... veteran turns from the remarkable Leonie Forbes, a versatile Jamaican treasure who had previously played my grandma in Soul Survivor (1995), and Dennis "Sprangalang" Hall - an avuncular Trini-icon, grounded the film in bridge-building territory by commanding respect up and down the English-speaking Caribbean and its extensive diaspora ...

... younger cast members, particularly the rising talent of Michael Miller, gave everything of themselves to infuse the piece with G.T.A. street-realism and anchor the story firmly in the context of urban North America ...





... the workshopping and rehearsal journey was rewarded by a sell-off, limited-run stage-production lauded for its intelligent use of minimal material resources ...

... the rich, sincere, non-sensational storytelling, around issues the Caribbean-Canadian family are only too familiar with, ensures the humanizing of every character and makes A Winter Tale compelling insight for broader audiences ...

... having engaged with focus-groups, community screening-forums, university and school groups of various ages, far-flung film festival folks, regular-release houses and even a non-West Indian audience at a police-sponsored showing in a charming Calgary, Alberta rep-house, I'm convinced Frances-Anne Solomon's direction accomplished its intent ... namely, a story reflective of social conscience and relevance, eschewing much of the self-consciousness sometimes found in this vein ...













... from this actor's p.o.v. there's no downside to socially-relevant credits on a resume ... I experienced a singularly organic process in making this film, binding camaraderie, splashy-bashy openings in Toronto, New York, Port Of Spain, St. John's, Antigua, and the particularly sweet irony of seeing my own largeness on the screen at the Carib Theatre in Kingston, Jamaica where I'd watched so many double-bills as a yout' ...

... A Winter Tale ... http://www.awintertale.ca/ ... has won some honors and much acclaim along the way, and if the award of recognition I was given at last year's Caribbean Tales Film Festival for my work is the result of some kind of typecasting, then so be it ... whosoever will may come ...