Sonya Wells of Spring Wells Production,
T&T’s Lisa Wickham and Jamaican filmmaker
Ras Kassa at the Piarco International airport.
Photo: David Wears

Ras Kassa is in Trinidad and Tobago to spice up HIV education in the region with a new one-hour documentary called Tribe. Kassa, founder of Guru Films, is a Jamaican video director. He’s best known for the much-emulated Welcome to Jamrock video, in which he put reggae artist Damien “Junior Gong” Marley in a BMW rolling through Jamaican ghetto settings to bring the gritty song’s lyrics vividly to life.

Don’t look for that image to be repeated in Tribe. “I don’t have a style. You can’t hold me to one style,” he drawled in his thick Jamaican patois in an interview on Monday at the Mucurapo offices of Lisa Wickham, who is the producer of the film. He had flown in on Sunday to start auditioning a T&T cast for the Unicef production, which will be shot here starting in late July. It will air on MTV, the US cable TV network. The film will not have “that Caribbean government feel that these things usually have. They beat you over the head with the message—‘use a condom’, ‘say no to drugs’—it leaves the office of these people and stay right there.”

Pointing to his sleek titanium Mac on the desk in front of him, he said he was watching the film Constantine and “there is no difference for me with Constantine and this film; different topics, same approach.” He added, “It’s not like religion where they beat you over the head. We’re trying to lose the beating over the head and make it be real.” Kassa has already directed one of the films in the series, Not to Me, which was set in Jamaica and showed the journey of a girl who contracts HIV. He wanted to call it Gudas Gyal, after the Jamaican slang for a hot, popular girl, but the title wasn’t approved. “I want to name this script Tribe because there is an issue in Trinidad between the Indians and the blacks, it’s not like in Jamaica where you just use whoever. In Trinidad there are different tribes. To me, I see people of colour as one race, whether you’re black or Indian, is all one but different tribe.”

The ideas of diversity and tribal loyalty, he said, will be played up in the script—but he’s not giving it away. Its central character is a young man who is HIV-positive. Kassa, a self-described dougla, joked that he must be part Trini and said he wants to highlight local culture in the project. “I insist on having stick fighting in the film. That is going to look so beautiful on film. I’m having a little butterfly in my stomach. There is this sweet-sour love between Trinidad and Jamaica. So whatever we do, the culture of Trinidad must be there. We must go and check out the scene. We need to vibe, we need to check out the people. It’s very important to me to make sure I represent Trinidad to the fullness.

“When you think of Trinidad you think of Carnival, and Carnival is two per cent of the movie, because everybody know that already. But people don’t know stick fighting. That is something that people should pass on to their kids. I want to save it.” Though he dismissed the local crime problem as small compared to Jamaica’s, he is disturbed about the country’s temperament. “I walk around and I feel like I’m in Miami. Then there is something I can’t put my finger on, that feel like it’s something underneath that is going to explode. It’s an issue but it’s cover up and it’s hidden.”

More Info
Casting ended July 17 at the E-Zone Entertainment office in Avenue First Street, St James. For info: 628-5797.