Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Two things can be said with cer­tain­ty about Mariel Brown's doc­u­men­tary, In­ward Hunger, on Er­ic Williams. First, it's a good il­lus­tra­tion of what lo­cal film­mak­ers and arts fun­ders could be do­ing: pro­duc­ing work of lo­cal in­ter­est and val­ue. Sec­ond, it il­lus­trates the se­ri­ous prob­lems of the pol­i­tics of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion. But the movie: it is a three-part opus that tells Williams's sto­ry from his birth in 1911 to death in 1981. The script (by Alake Pil­grim) gets the his­to­ry large­ly cor­rect. Williams's ear­ly life, his an­ces­try, his QRC and Ox­ford ex­pe­ri­ences are rea­son­ably well il­lus­trat­ed. Much of this ma­te­r­i­al comes from Williams's au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, which gives the doc­u­men­tary its name. And a few in­ter­est­ing, risky facts which were not as well known-like Williams's aban­don­ing his first fam­i­ly in the US, and hav­ing to get a quick­ie di­vorce to mar­ry his sec­ond wife, Soy-were in­clud­ed.

For its fac­tu­al fi­deli­ty, the doc­u­men­tary de­serves to be seen wide­ly in schools, and I imag­ine many adults would find it ed­i­fy­ing. Whether the main tar­get au­di­ence (teenagers, young adults) could be in­duced to sit still for three hours for this is an­oth­er mat­ter. (More on this lat­er.) As to the nar­ra­tive con­struc­tion of the life, some bits are giv­en more weight than oth­ers. Wil-liams's time at Howard in the US, and how he fit in­to the in­tel­lec­tu­al canon of the pre-na­tion­al­ist era, along­side fig­ures like Ralph Bunche and Alain Locke, are glossed over. This is one of the ma­jor weak­ness­es of the doc­u­men­tary-the in­abil­i­ty to as­sess, or even enu­mer­ate, Williams's con­sid­er­able in­tel­lec­tu­al achieve­ments. As if to re­dress this de­fi­cien­cy are a few lengthy di­gres­sions, like the bit on the 1930s labour sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad, to es­tab­lish the main so­cial and in­tel­lec­tu­al cur­rents of the pre-War era.

Oth­ers are Black Pow­er and lengthy in­ter­views with Williams's nieces and daugh­ter about the day of Williams's death. These are dis­tract­ing tan­gents-in­ter­est­ing, but re­dun­dant giv­en the sto­ry as pre­sent­ed.

This leads to an­oth­er weak­ness: the doc­u­men­tary qua struc­tured nar­ra­tive. It fol­lows the facts rather than guid­ing them in­to a pur­pose­ful arc. Even a bi­og­ra­phy can be or­ches­trat­ed (and the three sub­ti­tles show an aware­ness of this pos­si­bil­i­ty), but the gush of facts was over­whelm­ing, and formed an un­man­age­able nar­ra­tive. Some skilled edit­ing could have cut and re­or­gan­ised the ma­te­r­i­al in­to a more sat­is­fy­ing work. A sat­is­fy­ing work would have pre­sent­ed a the­sis on Williams-what he was, meant, was not, and so on, and used ma­te­r­i­al to ar­gue it. In­ward Hunger tries to get every­thing in, but leaves big gaps. As men­tioned, Williams's great love was schol­ar­ship, yet the doc­u­men­tary is weak on this. Lloyd Best and the New World Group-the PNM's an­tithe­sis-are men­tioned in pass­ing. Nei­ther are Williams's re­la­tion to Caribbean in­tel­lec­tu­als and his de­struc­tive in­ter­ven­tions in­to UWI ex­plored.

How­ev­er, many con­tro­ver­sial is­sues are broached-Williams's racial pol­i­tics, PNM cor­rup­tion, and his ma­nias (para­noia, vin­dic­tive­ness)-but the per­spec­tive veers be­tween po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and re­ac­tionary mid­dle class sen­ti­ment. Apro­pos of this, there's an in­ter­est­ing film with­in the film which the film­mak­ers ei­ther didn't see or couldn't touch, be­cause they were im­pli­cat­ed in it. This is the role of Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell. Er­i­ca man­han­dles the nar­ra­tive-like say­ing the Black Pow­er peo­ple should be on their knees be­fore her dad for not shoot­ing them. She over­lays a car­ing, lov­ing fa­ther, of her and the na­tion, rewrit­ing the sto­ry as it was be­ing told. That aside, this han­dling of the ma­te­r­i­al leaves us no bet­ter or worse off in terms of our knowl­edge of the man, what he did, and what he meant. His­to­ry, es­pe­cial­ly told via film, has many pos­si­bil­i­ties: none of them was ev­i­dent in the film­mak­ing-ei­ther in the script or the vi­su­al nar­ra­tive.

The first hour rolls like a sound­track with pic­tures. Much of it re­lies on cam­era pans on stills, and gloomy full-frontal in­ter­views with aca­d­e­mics, Williams con­fi­dants, and rel­a­tives. When more footage be­comes avail­able as Wil-liams's ca­reer blos­soms, it is laid down as em­bell­ish­ment to the sound­track, rather than as part of the dis­course/text. This is the fa­tal de­fi­cien­cy: the pover­ty of the "film­mak­ing" bit: style, tech­nique, tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence. Com­par­ing In­ward Hun-ger with suc­cess­ful doc­u­men- taries like last year's Acad­e­my Award-win­ning In­side Job, Mor­gan Spur­lock's Su­per­size Me, Black Box's Hack­ing Democ­ra­cy, and Ni­na Pa­ley's Si­ta Sings the Blues (to name a few) is re­veal­ing and dis­heart­en­ing. Un­like In­ward Hunger, ev­i­dent in all these are cre­ativ­i­ty, wit and in­tel­li­gence.

In­ward Hunger shares its de­bil­i­ties with many lo­cal films I've seen over the years. The per­ma­nent ex­cuse of Tri­ni film­mak­ers is "Oh Gord, we tryin'". But what is miss­ing from the films, in­clud­ing In­ward Hunger, is much more ba­sic than re­sources and train­ing. Miss­ing are imag­i­na­tion and the abil­i­ty to think past the lo­cal. You have to won­der what movies lo­cal film­mak­ers watch. Quentin Taran­ti­no learned to make movies by watch­ing movies. Kevin Smith made movies in an emp­ty con­ve­nience store with his friends as ac­tors. Rashomon was made with a low bud­get, min­i­mal sets and cast, and no CGI. The in­ten­tion here is not to heap all this on Mariel Brown's shoul­ders. This is an epis­temic is­sue: What is known, know­able, and ac­cept­able to of­fi­cial in­sti­tu­tions since it is ac­cess to in­sti­tu­tions, and the abil­i­ty to re­as­sure them their po­lit­i­cal or epis­te­mo­log­i­cal lim­its will not be breached, that de­ter­mine the art pro­duced.

If In­ward Hunger is what comes out of the Tri­ni fi­nan­cial-cre­ative, po­lit­i­cal-artis­tic nexus, the prob­lems are as bad as I think they are. The main prob­lem is (to re­peat): A small, un­de­serv­ing group seems to have a mo­nop­oly of cul­tur­al fund­ing and pro­duc­tion in Tri­ni-dad. But if In­ward Hunger is, in fun­ders' opin­ion, good stuff, then, well, what do I know?