Community News
Follow Your Passion – Commffest panel illustrates the importance of persistence
BY: JELANI GRANT
In celebration of Antiguan filmmakers and the culture of the island, the Commfest Arts and Culture Festival was held at the Lucie & Thorton Blackburn Conference Centre in the Distillery District. The festival ran from Oct 12th -15th and featured more than a dozen films within those days.
The night included food, live performances, a discussion panel and a premiere screening of Dr. Noel Howell’s Little Rude Boys. A primarily Antiguan panel, it included the feature’s director Dr. Howell as well as Commffest Executive Director Sandie De Freitas, recently sworn in Upper House Senator Daryll S. Matthew, TeleFilm financier Dan Lyon and Ophthalmologist Dr. Alvin Edwards. Consulate General Ann Marie Layne was also in attendance to support the growing festival with journalist Clifton Joseph, who would later perform a spoken word piece, as host of the night.
They each spoke about the many challenges they’ve personally witnessed when a movie is looking for funding or promotion. “It’s hard to produce films in the Caribbean. Films and movies take years to do…places like Antigua where the government doesn’t have funding, most of these filmmakers you see from the Caribbean are independent,” Joseph said. Most people in the Caribbean who are passionate about creating films know they will most likely have to do everything regarding the production of the film, on top of regular director responsibilities. Dr. Nowell said the film took about six weeks of production to complete but was finished at least five years ago, demonstrating the difficulty of bringing a movie to an audience.
Layne began the festival thirteen years ago during a time where she was working for a film distribution company in Downtown Toronto. “The one thing that struck me about that whole environment is that the films were shelved…my job was to watch the films to see if I could interpret them for maybe the educators to buy. But then I realized these are amazing films that nobody has seen and I kept saying that I need to do something about it,” she said.
During that time the opportunity presented itself for her to put on an initiative and she decided to present a number of unseen films. The success of the first year’s presentation encouraged her to take it further with an international film theme that illustrated social and cultural issues. “Thirteen years later we’re here, getting films from all over the world. They’re very small-budget so micro sometimes making $500, but the whole point was the message they brought and how I saw it impacted people once they saw that film,” Layne said.
About a year ago she decided to focus on Antigua, traveling there and pitched the festival idea to the Antigua Ministry of Education. Though they were initially unsure, Layne kept pushing, calling them back over and over until the maybe turned into a yes. They showcased a number of short films to youth in the country, giving fifteen tickets to each school and soon after people began complaining that there were not enough tickets. Fifteen tickets turned into 100 tickets per school and last February the festival hosted more than 600 students over two days. This year, Layne said she pitched the idea of an “Antigua-Barbuda Film Festival because I feel like we should all be working together. So, this year for our festival I thought let’s extend this a little further. Let’s bring together the Antiguan, Barbudans and the Caribbean Diaspora to see how we can all connect and start to focus a little bit more on the arts of Antigua.”
Little Rude Boys is a comedic family drama centered around an ill woman and her fourteen grandchildren, whom she has been deceived into taking care of day after day during the summer. While coping with her unavoidable sickness, she tries to deal with each child brought to her home and the trouble they sometimes carry with them.
The film stresses the importance of regularly dealing with one’s health and the different ways Caribbean families raise their children. Dr. Nowell said he made it a point to touch on issues such as getting regular health checks and the double standards of how boys and girls are raised. “I know there were times, especially the boys, where we felt like grandma hates us. But that was just the way she showed her love.” Nowell said.
Dr. Howell correlated the film with the passing of both his mother and sister due to breast cancer. During the beginning of the film, it was illustrated that the age people should begin asking for breast cancer checks have increased from a recommended age of 50 to 30-40 years old. Before starting the premiere, the director shared his personal connection with the message of the film as both his mother and sister passed from breast cancer. He said child actors in the movie were also given the responsibility of filming some of the scenes, learned to set up equipment while using zoom and focus on professional cameras.
The night concluded with food, live singing, a steel pan performance, and discussions amongst the audience who were brought to tears by the end of the film.