Kali­fa Clyne

The movie Home Again tells a Caribbean sto­ry, through the eyes of Ja­maica but al­so through the land­scape of T&T, says its lo­cal pro­duc­er Lisa Wick­ham.Her state­ment was in re­sponse to an ar­ti­cle in the Ja­maica Glean­er ear­li­er this week which re­sult­ed in crit­i­cism be­cause, al­though it is set in Ja­maica, the film was shot in T&T and fea­tured T&T ac­tors.She said when Ja­maicans saw the film they would have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what it was about.

"It is a mis­un­der­stand­ing when Ja­maicans feel it is just a film laden with fake Trinidad ac­cents," Wick­ham said.She added that most of the main ac­tors in the film were ei­ther Ja­maican or of Ja­maican de­scent and said Ja­maicans liv­ing in T&T had al­so been a part of the process.The film was made by Cana­di­an pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Hun­gry Eyes Film & Tele­vi­sion and is ex­pect­ed to open in Ja­maica with­in the next two months.

It tells the sto­ry of three de­por­tees who are re­turned to Ja­maica af­ter spend­ing most of their lives in for­eign coun­tries. The three lead char­ac­ters are played by Tatyana Ali, Stephan James and Lyriq Bent.The movie, which was filmed on lo­ca­tion in Trinidad over a pe­ri­od of two months, was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to be shot in Ja­maica. That coun­try dragged its feet on pro­duc­tion agree­ments so it was de­cid­ed to shoot it in Trinidad.

Wick­ham said the first thing done was to make sure Trinidad could pass as Ja­maica and a lot of lo­ca­tion scout­ing was done to achieve that.She said the sec­ond im­por­tant fac­tor was the 35 per cent re­bate T&T of­fered as an in­cen­tive to film­mak­ers."A lot of coun­tries of­fer be­tween 30 and 41 per cent in­cen­tive as mak­ing a film is a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in a short space of time," she said.The re­bate, as well as the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of im­port­ing equip­ment, was or­gan­ised by the T&T Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC).

"The process through TTFC was rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple. There were no is­sues at all and they were very re­spon­sive. I think every­body was on the same page: That this film had to be suc­cess­ful," she added.As the lo­cal pro­duc­er, Wick­ham was re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing sure all re­quire­ments were met and in some cas­es had to cre­ate or build cus­tomised trucks that were not avail­able in T&T.She said the film­mak­ers could have de­cid­ed to just use the lo­ca­tion and bring their own crew but opt­ed to use re­sources avail­able in Trinidad.

They flew in eight cast mem­bers and 37 key crew mem­bers, us­ing ac­tors and oth­er nec­es­sary re­quire­ments avail­able lo­cal­ly.Wick­ham said she was proud of the film which has had sold­out screen­ings in lo­cal cin­e­mas and is now in its fifth week at Movi­eTowne.She said though the film­ing was time-con­sum­ing, it was worth it."I'm very pas­sion­ate be­cause I see what it means for the film in­dus­try," she said.