bassculture islands
started to make short
films. Then we, together
with Paul Bucknor and
my parents, came up
with the idea of hosting
an annual film festival.
This became the Flashpoint Film Festival and
our shorts provided
most of the content. The
festival was very influential for us as beginning
filmmakers. We all of a
sudden needed to create
content. It was extremely
guerilla, low-budget and
not necessarily scripted,
experimental filmmaking. We spent one summer shooting our films
and after that we edited
our own projects with
advice and suggestions
from each of us. We
probably made all the
mistakes that you can
make as a filmmaker, but
after experiencing that
whole process I was really much more equipped
to do my next story. It
was a major learning
ground.
ties. I had always been
fascinated with the Cold
War and the international geopolitics that
has affected Jamaica so
much. I read all these old
newspaper articles about
the tensions on the island and began to construct scenes from those
articles. It became clear
that, for me, the ultimate
story of the Cold War
When did you come up era was about the poor
with the idea of your first people, the sufferers, so
feature film, Better Mus’ the story had to repreCome, and how did this sent them. At one point
project materialize?
I came across the information about the Green
I really wanted to make Bay Massacre, the secret
a film about the seven- operation carried out in