How does a foreign film director from Barbados fare when she takes her low-budget movie to Los Angeles, the century-old global centre for motion picture production?
Red Plastic Bag, one of Barbados’ and the Caribbean’s best known entertainers was quick to answer: “Marcia Weekes did very well. The filmwas well-received. People liked it.”
RPB, who has an acting part as a rich businessman in Vigilante: The Crossing that had its world premiere at the African Film Festival in LA spoke with passion and pride about Barbados’ latest entry into the world of drama.
“It’s a film with important messages about life. It deals with many of the myths people have of each other, about colour, wealth, love and fellowship,” said the singer whose hit Ragga Ragga remains popular, more than a decade after it first hit the airwaves.
“I am excited about its prospects after how it was received in America.”
Marcia Weekes, who with her husband, Dave,is pursuing a dream of making serious movies that tell stories which reflect Barbadian and Caribbean culture and that are soul-searching and geared to family audiences, agreed with RPB. Speaking after the reception in Los Angeles and after more than 150 Bajans and other West Indians crowded into Brooklyn’s St Gabriel’s Episcopal Church on a very cold Saturday evening to see the Vigilante: The Crossing,she said:
“We were more than satisfied, happy is a good way to put it, with the response in Los Angeles and in Brooklyn,” said Weekes, who wrote and directed the 106-minute production that took more than a year to complete and is suitable for general audiences.
“In Los Angeles the reaction was deep with some scenes even bringing tears to people’s eyes. In New York, the audience was excited about seeing the different locations and the mixing of the races in an amicable relationship.”
The Vigilante may not have the lavish scenes and expensive electronic and eye-catching techniques that leave theatregoers gasping for breath, but it delved into the cross- currents of love, ethnic stereotyping, criminal gang behaviour, guns, the drug culture, police abuse and all of the things that are commonplace in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and various North American cities and are becoming a fact of life in parts of Barbados and the Caribbean. Premiering as it did a few months after issues of race and the actions of police officers in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City left two young black men dead and captured national and international headlines, the Barbados film struck a responsive cord with blacks who are routinely confronted with the disturbing realities of life in large cities where police officers mistreat and sometimes kill or injure young black men for no apparent reason. What was different were the scenes in a typical Barbadian community, accents of key players which were distinctly Bajan, and the inter-racial relationships which went from amorous to hostile and back to friendly and close-knit.
Actually, the story is about a criminal alien, Dexter, played by Kirk Brown who was deported from the US to Barbados, where a once tranquil village is now overtaken by many of social and economic ills that are commonplace in North America. Dexter tries to make amends for his life of crime by trying to save his village.
Interestingly, not all of the villains were black. There is a white major drug dealer who confronts his arch-rivals and must deal with the fact that a relative Amy, played by Malissa Alana, fallsin love with a blackman. And when a serious health problem hits a white man, whose survival depends on an expensive operation, the financial saviour is a rich black businessman played by RPB whose donation saves a life.
The film which is to have its premiere this week in Barbados was embraced by the audience in the church, whose pastor is the Rev. Eddie Alleyne, rector ofSt Gabriel’s.
K. E. Forde, a former Barbados track andfield champion, gave Vigilante thumbs upfor tackling the issueof love and ethnicitywith “sensitivity.”
“It did a good jobtelling a familiar story,” said Forde.
Sandra Alleyne, a hairstylist whose roots are in St Jude’s in St George, said the film correctly showed that raciallymixed relationshipcan survive deeplyrooted prejudices.
Earl Phillips, a Barbadian who isthe secretary-treasurerof the Transport Workers’ Union, a powerful trade union in the city, said he would have liked to see“a bit more balance” inthe lifestyles of blacksand whites . “Not all whites are affluent andnot all blacks are poor either,” he noted.