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Banyan News |
After eleven years and three attempts to put our community television
station on the air weÕve finally made it with two years to run on our licence. Gayelle:The Channel began transmission on
UHF Channel 23 and Cable channel 7 on 16th February 2004.
Gayelle has now been granted a Major Territorial concession for the next
ten years, permitting it to increase its free-to-air coverage to the whole of
Trinidad. It will transmit now also on UHF Channel 27 from Gran Couva in
TrinidadÕs central Range.
If you have broadband you can see it live (for a subscription fee in
some areas) at www.gayelletv.com
Visit the developing Gayelle web site at www.gayelletv.com
2002 -2003
Work
on a documentary on Harold Sonny Ladoo
In September 2002 BanyanÕs Christopher Laird travelled to Canada to begin work on a documentary on
Trinidadian/Canadian novelist, Harold Ladoo.
He researched and filmed interviews with LadooÕs family and colleagues. A second trip to Canada took place in March 2003 to meet with Canadian novelist Peter
Such who will be in Toronto then. Such was one of LadooÕs closest friends and
was instrumental in opening doors for this young Trinidadian to carve his space
in the Canadian literary world – see SuchÕs essay The Short Life and
Sudden Death of Harold Ladoo. Filming in
Trinidad of HaroldÕs primary school teacher, school friend, sister and sister
in law has been done.
What has to be done now is the most creatively
challenging part, selecting extracts from the writing, scripting and shooting
visualisations of those extracts and composing all these parts into the
documentary.
See an article, The
Uncompromising Eye, associated
with the trip and published in the Trinidad & Tobago Revue.
Awards - July
2002
NDATT Vanguard Award for
Banyan
The national Drama Association of Trinidad & Tobago has awarded
Banyan their Vanguard Award as part of their annual Cacique Awards to the
Theatre Fraternity. The award was made to Banyan in the name of its principals,
Christopher Laird. Bruce
Paddington and Tony Hall:
For their
innovative, ground-breaking television programming, which introduced a number
of directors, actors and designers to, and through, the medium of totally local
film and video productions. Their brand of ingenuity has served to redefine the
way we see ourselves and our region.
Banyan
in the Guyanese rainforest with the Waiwai
March 2002 saw Christopher Laird of Banyan working
with filmmaker and cultural activist Michel Gilkes filming a visit Michael
organised to the Waiwai village of Masakeňari
in Guyana with Guyanese concert pianist and music professor, Ray Luck, and
piano technician Remington Ally to join the WaiwaiÕs in a concert of
music and song.
This was part of a larger
project, called The Music of El Dorado, Michael is producing examining the place of the interior and its
indigenous population in Guyanese society.
Two years ago a self styled
British explorer, and eco-tour operator, Colonel Blashford Snell seeking to
satisfy the WaiwaiÕs desire for a keyboard, transported a grand piano (by air,
canoe and dragging on a sled through the forest) to the village and had the
whole gesture filmed by the BBC to produce a film called The Mission which portrayed the intrepid Colonel on his Ôjolly
japeÕ. Since then, the piano has lain relatively unused and deteriorating in a
corner of the village church.
Michael hoped that by the
combined efforts of Guyanese piano technician to recondition the piano and
teach villagers simple maintenance and the skills of Ray Luck as player and
educator that the musical talent of the WaiwaiÕs would be augmented by the
piano and in that way the piano would be ÔindigenisedÕ.
While Michael works on the larger project Christopher
Laird worked with Michael to construct a 25 minute film around the rainforest
experience, called Concert in the Rainforest the film explores with very few
words, the questions of tradition and the passing on of tradition as well as
documenting the tremendous chemistry resulting from Ray LuckÕs interaction with the people of Masakeňari Concert in
the Rainforest has the distinction of being BanyanÕs
first film in stereo. Sound
engineer, Robin Foster, ensured the purest stereo recordings of
Ray LuckÕs piano and the music of the Waiwai warmed by the faint breath of the
gas lanterns during the concert and the magical atmosphere of the intricately
thatched church.
The Children of Masakeňari join in the singing
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Boscoe Holder |
James Isaiah Boodhoo |
Black Stalin |
Colin Laird |
Front gallery is a programme of recording the lives
and work of major Caribbean cultural figures. This project, in collaboration
with Caribbean Contemporary Arts is
a major archiving project which will generate material which will not only be
housed in the Caribbean Motion Picture Archive but also with the artists
involved, The National Library and the Interamericas Foundation in New York
which is providing funding for this exercise along with the Ford Foundation.
Seventeen long interviews have already been videotaped in Trinidad. Transcriptions of the interviews are in progress - an extract
of one of the interviews is posted as this
monthÕs archive extract. The project continues with other personalities in other parts of the
Caribbean and resident in the diaspora.
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Sterling Betancourt |
Anthony Williams |
Carlisle Chang |
Gimistory
_
The Cast
of Gimistory
Banyan documented the Gimistory storytelling festival
in the Cayman Islands in November 2000 and 2001. Hosted by the National Cayman Cultural Foundation, each night for some ten nights the
cast which included tellers from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad_ Tobago, Guyana,
Ireland, US and Australia as well as the Caymans perform in an open yard in a
different community in the islands. Besides documenting the performances,
Banyan took the opportunity to talk in depth with the trailblazers of telling
in the Caribbean, Ken Corsbie, Marc Matthews and Henry Muttoo. A two hour show
based on the stories in the festival is now available and a short documentary
on the festival and the art of storytelling in the region is in progress.
Banyan is presently also in the process of experimenting in the production of a
DVD version.
Ken Corsbie
telling his Singing in the Rain 
Banyan continues to work towards a document on the Dem Two/ All Ah We
phenomenon of the 70s when Ken and Marc and others showed us all what was
possible with our literature and our oral traditions.
After
some thirty years developing this project BanyanÕs plans to produce a feature
film based on No Pain Like This Body a novel
by Trinidadian/Canadian author, the late Harold
Sonny Ladoo have stalled for lack of finance. Development of the
project continues as we search for partners and resources to actualise this
project.
We keep at it and it will happen. The script
is available online.
Some
other projects still trying to attract distribution/funding whatever to get
them out of the pilot stage and into production
Banyan's
Uprising Series
A series of six short dramas focusing on the choices open to young
people living in the Caribbean. At least one film from each of the language
areas of the region directed by different directors and shot on film. The pilot
film, Entry Denied, by Jamaican director, Chris Browne is now complete. Banyan will be working
with the pilot film (shot on 16mm but edited on BetacamSP) and a short-list of
some ten treatments for other films in the series to raise finance and interest
in the production of the series.
Entry Denied tells the tale of a young
Jamaican from the ghettos of Kingston who, having been awarded a soccer
scholarship for Florida University has his US Visa denied.
Walk
Like a Dragon
Banyan
has been working with Pan Trinbago (the Steelband Association of Trinidad &
Tobago) for the past three years developing the script for a full length
feature drama with the history of the steelband as its background. A video pilot based
on a script written by Tony Hall and directed and produced by Tony Hall and
Christopher Laird is now complete along with a detailed outline screenplay and
treatment. The process of raising finance and obtaining commitments from
television stations and distributors continues.
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Banyan's Home page This Month's Archive Extract |
Banyan
Limited, 3 Adam Smith Square, Woodbrook, Port of
Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, The Caribbean
Voice: (868) 681 0175 Fax:
(868) 622 4601 E-mail: banyan@pancaribbean.com