BC Pires

A re­view by

BC Pires

There are sev­er­al con­tenders for the best mo­ment in Michael Mooleed­har and Prof Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed's Bel­mont, Pic­ton and Laven­tille doc­u­men­tary, City on the Hill. They in­clude a won­der­ful un­der­state­ment of the threat of vi­o­lence from folk group rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gail Ed­in­bor­ough, the spo­ken-word po­et­ry of Free­town Col­lec­tive pres­i­dent El­ton Scant­le­bury, the open­ing and clos­ing video mon­tages and the nar­ra­tion and in­sight through­out of 3Canal leader and Bel­mont na­tive, Wen­dell Man­war­ren.

There is, though, one clear worst mo­ment; re­gret­tably, the film­mak­ers chose to put that at the very start, be­fore the film has a chance to de­clare it­self.

Af­ter a large­ly im­pres­sive 75-sec­ond-long mon­tage of im­ages of Laven­tille over a Maria Callas aria from M But­ter­fly, an­oth­er great tragedy, the film­mak­ers throw up on the blank screen two para­graphs of dread­ful text tak­en from the back of the DVD box, where it should have re­mained.

The text switch­es from Amer­i­can ("fo­cused" in­stead of "fo­cussed") to British spelling ("epi­cen­tre") and from the third per­son ("this film") to the first ("we were un­able") with­out seem­ing to no­tice; or care. Its two para­graphs would be cut to two sen­tences with­out clich�–his­to­ry here needs must be che­quered, the artis­tic tra­di­tions are re­quired to be rich and vi­brant, the City on the Hill (with cap­i­tal let­ters) is not at the mere cen­tre of an evo­lu­tion of a che­quered his­to­ry but at its epi­cen­tre (but at least it's not at the epi­cen­ter, ex­cept per­haps when it is fo­cused).

It is a pity, for the rest of the film ranges from en­tire­ly sol­id to ex­cep­tion­al­ly good, and there was no need for that text at all, apart from iden­ti­fy­ing the film's im­pe­tus–which could have been done in the cred­its. It takes away a great deal from the film, se­vere­ly lessens the im­pact of the M But­ter­fly video over­ture and adds noth­ing at all, un­less one counts the neg­a­tive ap­pre­hen­sions it in­stills in the view­er; the on­ly good thing that can be said about it is that it scrolls far too rapid­ly for all but the fastest read­ers to ap­pre­ci­ate quite how bad it is.

There is a quan­tum leap in qual­i­ty from the lan­guage of the film­mak­ers to the lan­guage of the film it­self. The bulk of the writ­ten script is tak­en from the finest of sources: the po­et­ry of Derek Wal­cott (and Wayne Brown) and the prose of Earl Lovelace, from po­ems and fic­tion writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for Laven­tille, and per­formed, rather than nar­rat­ed, by Wen­dell Man­war­ren. Yet an­oth­er con­tender for the film's best mo­ment comes when, af­ter im­ages of ne­glect and de­pri­va­tion, Man­war­ren dead­pans Wal­cott's great line from the po­em, Laven­tille, that, "to go down­hill from here was to as­cend."

When the film script moves away from be­ing very well writ­ten it be­comes very well spo­ken. Bel­mont's best-known son, David Rud­der, was un­avail­able at the time of shoot­ing, but every­one giv­en the chance to speak, in­clud­ing the most or­di­nary of Laven­tille and Bel­mont res­i­dents, be­comes an or­a­tor.

Dr Asad Mo­hammed, Wen­dell Man­war­ren him­self, Free­town Col­lec­tive pres­i­dent El­ton Scant­le­bury, Rudy­lynn Roberts of the In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects, tra­di­tion­al mas mak­er Glen­don Mor­ris, Hen­ry Ato­nine of the Ra­da com­mu­ni­ty and more all do the film, the ar­chi­tec­ture, the neigh­bour­hoods of Laven­tille, Pic­ton and Bel­mont and them­selves, jus­tice. (A cyn­i­cal re­view­er might opine that res­i­dent Pre­ston Alexan­der's en­thu­si­asm for the view from Breezy Hill might have been coun­ter­bal­anced by an­oth­er great line from the same Wal­cott po­em: "This is the height of pover­ty.")

The best line in the film, though, if not its best mo­ment, must be the mas­sive un­der­state­ment of Gail Ed­in­bor­ough of the North West Laven­tille Folk Group. "Some­times we get pan mu­sic from both an­gles," she says, ges­tic­u­lat­ing in ei­ther di­rec­tion, "from Mu­sic Mak­ers and from Des­pers... So prob­a­bly that bring out that en­er­gy in us; [or it] could be maybe the gun­shots."

If there is a gap­ing bul­let hole in the heart of the film, it is that the crime that, sad­ly but truth­ful­ly, plagues the area is en­tire­ly side­stepped. Any men­tion of it–such as Bo­lo Shankra's com­ment that be­liev­ers are too afraid to come to the Hin­du tem­ple on the hill–is de­lib­er­ate­ly fad­ed out. Old­er footage of Wit­co Des­per­a­does in their own pa­n­yard high on the hill is not fol­lowed by more re­cent im­ages of Des­pers scur­ry­ing from the Ap­sara car park in search of a re­hearsal site where their mem­bers can be sure they will not be dis­mem­bered.

The film­mak­ers de­lib­er­ate­ly fo­cussed on the pos­i­tive as­pects of the com­mu­ni­ties, and might re­spond that this was the sto­ry they chose to tell; it would seem, though, that so cen­tral a sub­ject ought to be at least raised to be dis­missed, and more sub­stan­tial­ly than in the as­ser­tions of talk­ing heads that there was more to Bel­mont than bul­lets. Even if on­ly two or three min­utes were al­lot­ted to a state­ment of the sin­gle great­est chal­lenge the com­mu­ni­ties face, the film would have been bet­ter.

And there was enough time to do it.

City on the Hill de­votes ten of its 47 min­utes to­wards doc­u­ment­ing the many and var­ied be­liefs of res­i­dents. From the con­vic­tion of Or­isha shep­herd Oliv­er Quam­i­na that rams to be sac­ri­ficed should be vir­gins through Hen­ry An­toine's as­ser­tion that Ra­da is dif­fer­ent from Shango to Bo­lo Shankra's ob­ser­va­tion that all man­i­fes­ta­tions of deities spring from Shi­va, all of the com­mu­ni­ties' su­per­sti­tions are re­flect­ed–but of the down-to-Earth re­al­i­ty of bul­lets whizzing through win­dows un­bid­den noth­ing is said.

The cin­e­matog­ra­phy de­lib­er­ate­ly re­flects the area as be­ing full of turns and twists but there are still some­times glar­ing­ly jumpy cam­era move­ments–ex­plained by Michael Mooleed­har as re­sult­ing from their be­ing filmed by hand­held cam­era, to fa­cil­i­tate quick es­cape, be­cause of the dan­ger of shoot­ing [sic!] in cer­tain lo­ca­tions; apart from that, the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, by Enil­lio "Wiz­zKy­dd" By­noe is out­stand­ing, with the on­ly pos­si­ble crit­i­cism be­ing that some shots–such as the one of the steps–could have been held a lot longer (as they well might have been in an ide­al world, or even a less hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment).

The archival footage, too, is top-notch and par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to watch from the per­spec­tive of an en­tire an­thro­po­log­i­cal gen­er­a­tion's worth of biki­ni and beads be­ing treat­ed as though it were mas. The ex­tend­ed ver­sions of the video of 60s Car­ni­val bands and lim­bo dancers would make ex­cel­lent ex­tra fea­tures on the DVD.

One of the best se­quences in the film is the end­ing. To the sound­track of live African drum­ming (with one drum­mer sport­ing a Chelsea team shirt), two young boys fly­ing kites high on the hill bat­tle to cut one an­oth­er's thread. Af­ter an ex­tend­ed, very well-edit­ed se­quence, what might be the best im­age of Laven­tille so far made emerges: that of one kite fly­ing high­er while the oth­er spi­rals down to crash, pre­sum­ably lost for­ev­er.

It is a re­flec­tion of the truth about life every­where, from Laven­tille to the Roy­al Bor­ough of Kens­ing­ton and Chelsea: de­spite all the pos­i­tives any­one opts to fo­cus on, one per­son's as­cen­sion is usu­al­ly paid for by an­oth­er's down­fall; and it hap­pens far more reg­u­lar­ly, with far less fan­fare, in East Port-of-Spain than in Lon­don's West End.

Screen­ing dates:

City on the Hill will be screened in the T&T Film Fes­ti­val on the fol­low­ing dates:

�2 Sep­tem­ber 18, 6.30 pm, UWI

�2 Sep­tem­ber 21, 4 pm, Movi­eTowne Port-of-Spain

�2 Sep­tem­ber 23, 6 pm, Nalis, Port-of-Spain

�2 Sep­tem­ber 26, 11 am, Movi­eTowne Port-of-Spain