Joshua Sur­tees

A man rush­es up to the house in Pe­tit Val­ley to de­liv­er a bag of corn syrup, con­densed milk and red dye to Jef­frey Al­leyne. I'm on set with the film­mak­er in the sleepy vil­lage he has dubbed "Val­ley­wood."

"This is not a gang­ster film," Al­leyne tells me, a few days lat­er at the T&T Guardian's of­fices, de­spite the fact the corn syrup and red dye were used as liq­uid spe­cial ef­fects for the blood­i­er scenes.

There is gun vi­o­lence in the film, but it's more than a film about gang­sters. "There are scenes on the av­enue, scenes in a dance­hall, scenes fea­tur­ing the el­ders in the com­mu­ni­ty," says Al­leyne. "We're try­ing to show the lives that are hap­pen­ing in the sub-cul­ture ghet­toes of T&T."

It's not a film that glo­ri­fies vi­o­lence: quite the op­po­site. With its young, tal­ent­ed cast of am­a­teur ac­tors most of whom come from Mor­vant and Laven­tille, it's a film with a mes­sage about how de­press­ing­ly easy it can be for youths to slip in­to vi­o­lent ret­ri­bu­tion in Trinidad's rougher com­mu­ni­ties.

"Do­ing the wrong thing is eas­i­er," says lead ac­tor Raphael Joseph, who plays a char­ac­ter called Ma­chine, a maxi dri­ver with a good heart and some bad ac­quain­tances, whose main aim in life is to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly and en­joy him­self. Gen­er­ous with the lit­tle mon­ey he earns, we see him in touch­ing scenes giv­ing mon­ey to his niece, played by the di­rec­tor's 16-year-old daugh­ter Sun­shyne De Sil­va. A fond­ness for win­ning at cards with un­savoury char­ac­ters leads him in­to prob­lems that spi­ral out of con­trol.

When Al­leyne ap­peared on a morn­ing TV talk show, one of the pro­duc­ers told him his film, Wel­come To War­lock: The Land of the Law­less, re­mind­ed him of the Brazil­ian film City of God, an ul­tra-vi­o­lent, sur­re­al movie from 2002 which por­trays young black ghet­to kids tak­ing lives with lit­tle fore­thought or af­ter­thought. But Wel­come To War­lock, Al­leyne's first full-length fea­ture film, pays more at­ten­tion to the im­pact vi­o­lent crime can have on lives, re­la­tion­ships and fam­i­lies.

"We want peo­ple to watch this movie and say, "I don't want to be a gang­ster," says Dar­rel Munroe, who plays a peace­mak­er be­tween the war­ring fac­tions.

Guer­ril­las in the mist

Filmed by Al­leyne alone, us­ing a handy­cam and tri­pod, it could be de­scribed as guer­ril­la film­mak­ing. Scenes are shot spon­ta­neous­ly. A typ­i­cal day's work in­volves Al­leyne as­sem­bling his young thes­pi­ans, brief­ing them on the scene, throw­ing them lines from the script, then let­ting them run with it. This flu­id mode of pro­duc­tion means scenes can be halt­ed and re-start­ed in­stant­ly with di­rec­tions giv­en in a no-non­sense way.

Lat­er, Al­leyne ed­its the scenes, boost­ing the au­dio, re-dub­bing di­a­logue, fix­ing se­quenc­ing and con­ti­nu­ity.

An 11-minute trail­er on YouTube has had over 20,000 views and cre­at­ed a buzz in Mor­vant and be­yond, where the film's re­lease on DVD is ea­ger­ly await­ed.

Fol­low­ing the kind of DIY ethos that char­ac­teris­es un­der­ground pop­u­lar cul­ture in these mod­ern times, the DVD will be self-pro­duced and dis­trib­uted by cast mem­bers.

It's a shame it won't get wider cov­er­age by be­ing en­tered in­to the T&T Film Fes­ti­val 2014, but there are rea­sons that might not hap­pen–pre­dom­i­nant­ly an im­passe be­tween Al­leyne and the film in­dus­try of­fi­cials. Be­sides, Al­leyne tells me, be­ing in the film fes­ti­val doesn't guar­an­tee big­ger au­di­ences.

"I went to a screen­ing of an un­der­ground movie at Movi­eTowne and there were two peo­ple in the au­di­to­ri­um," he says. Per­haps word of mouth will car­ry it to the au­di­ence it de­serves.

Al­leyne de­scribes his style as "a mix be­tween Hol­ly­wood and Nol­ly­wood. With more em­pha­sis on how a film feels not how it looks and sounds."

He would be the first to ac­knowl­edge that the film isn't slick or over­pro­duced. But why would a grit­ty film about street life be filmed in Su­per HD? That wouldn't make much sense. Al­leyne's film sits at the in­ter­sec­tion of art and re­al life.

"It's a com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion project. It's film as a so­cial in­ter­ven­tion tool. If the gov­ern­ment want to know what to do about vi­o­lence they should watch me."

A few days lat­er at the T&T Film Com­pa­ny stake­hold­er meet­ing, Al­leyne took the floor and said, "I could snap my fin­gers and make a film. It mightn't be a high-qual­i­ty film, but it go be a film peo­ple want to see."

And he's right. Lots of ar­t­house movies come out of T&T, bare­ly reg­is­ter­ing with the pub­lic. There is more buzz about this film among or­di­nary young Tri­nis. Some­body ought to en­sure it is seen by the max­i­mum num­ber of eyes.

Meet­ing the cast

The fol­low­ing week, five of the ac­tors come to the T&T Guardian's of­fices. I take them in­to the board­room, where they seem at ease. Six­teen-year-old Omar­ley Philbert from Mor­vant sits at the head of the long ta­ble as if he's the CEO, at one point ask­ing, to the amuse­ment of the oth­ers, if this is "where they get to­geth­er and agree who they're go­ing to fire?"

When Philbert and I first speak I fear we might need a trans­la­tor for my Eng­lish ac­cent and his Tri­ni di­alect.

Dar­rel Munroe, 39, has seen a lot. From Mor­vant orig­i­nal­ly, he now lives in Gon­za­les, Bel­mont. Both ar­eas lie with­in, "the war zone" as he puts it. He found his own moth­er mur­dered and tells me he had two choic­es: send peo­ple to kill the per­pe­tra­tors or turn the oth­er cheek. He is now es­tab­lished with­in the Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty and some­thing of a coun­sel­lor for youths on the brink of self-de­struct.

"I'll be re­al with you, I grew up in the thug life as a kid. I know the life and a lot of youths look up to me. Some would say I'm a leader or a head, but I would say I'm an el­der. I don't pro­mote rob­bing or any form of wrong­do­ing."

He feels the film will be the first to ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect what hap­pens in bad ar­eas.

"If you want to act those roles, come in the ghet­to," he says. "Spend a week or a lit­tle two days, see how it is in the ghet­to, see what the youths are do­ing, so when you go back out there you know how it re­al­ly is."

Tris­ton Car­ryl is 20 and soft­ly spo­ken. He saw the YouTube trail­er and was in­tro­duced to Al­leyne. Get­ting a part re­quired con­fi­dence, pas­sion and self-mo­ti­va­tion. His friends are hap­py for him, he says. "Act­ing gets me off the streets. They tell me if I keep it up I could find this be­ing my fu­ture."

Would they act in a dif­fer­ent kind of film, a love sto­ry? I'm try­ing to un­der­stand if it's the ghet­to el­e­ment that ap­peals but they say they'd be more than hap­py to act in a T&T street ver­sion of Romeo and Juli­et. When Sun­shyne ar­rives I re­vis­it the sub­ject and they seem even more keen to play such a part with her as co-star.

Sun­shyne has seen her fa­ther, Al­leyne, trans­formed in­to a film pro­duc­er and di­rec­tor, hav­ing been re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed from a gang­ster life. There was a time he nev­er dreamt he'd be mak­ing chil­dren's films like 2011's An­oth­er Cin­derel­la, with a cast of un­der-12s. Or Snow Cone and the Sev­en Brats, a forth­com­ing film aimed at the Dis­ney mar­ket but with an un­der­ground vibe.

Film in­dus­try eco­nom­ics make it dif­fi­cult for Al­leyne to ac­quire a new au­di­ence across the Caribbean and the glob­al di­as­po­ra. Fund­ing from the T&T Film Co re­quires a mar­ket­ing plan, some­thing which isn't part of his agen­da, he'd rather im­merse him­self in the film­mak­ing process.

As a one-man film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, it takes up all his wak­ing hours. To get more ex­po­sure he needs as­sis­tance with grants and with de­vel­op­ing a com­mer­cial strat­e­gy. One hopes ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the two par­ties can hap­pen. A work­ing part­ner­ship could be ben­e­fi­cial to both.

As lead ac­tor Raphael Joseph puts it, "We're try­ing to bring com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er. What we're do­ing now is a step­ping stone for where we're go­ing. So that in­stead of pick­ing up guns this might give the op­por­tu­ni­ty for every­body to make movies."

Speak­ing about Al­leyne, a long­time friend and men­tor, he added "Jef­frey is our in­flu­encer and I thank God he in­flu­enced me to do the right things. I'm so glad what he's do­ing is not a job, it's some­thing he loves and has pas­sion for. That's why we're go­ing strong still. If he was study­ing it as a job, he might not have reached this far."