Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

"Mar­ley res­onat­ed with me be­cause in my trav­els around the world I had seen his im­pact. Al­ways, every­where you go around the globe, from Ti­bet to Japan, you find Bob Mar­ley fans. And I just won­dered why? What is it about him that is so much more res­o­nant than any oth­er pop­u­lar mu­si­cian through­out his­to­ry?" These words by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning di­rec­tor Kevin Mac­Don­ald ar­tic­u­late his in­her­ent in­ter­est and cu­rios­i­ty in­to the life of reg­gae leg­end Bob?Mar­ley, which led him to di­rect the wide­ly ac­claimed 2012 doc­u­men­tary ti­tled Mar­ley. The Scot­tish film­mak­er con­duct­ed a Q&A ses­sion which was host­ed by the British High Com­mis­sion­er to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Arthur Gor­don Snell at his res­i­dence in Mar­aval last Thurs­day af­ter­noon. Mac­don­ald came to Trinidad to in­tro­duce his lat­est film Mar­ley at the open­ing night gala of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val 2012 which took place on Sep­tem­ber 19 at the Queen's Hall. The bi­o­graph­i­cal film is an in-depth look at the life, mu­sic and lega­cy of the reg­gae star and was re­leased in ear­li­er this year to high crit­i­cal ac­claim.

When asked whether he sees any short­com­ings in the film that he now wish­es he could change, Mac­don­ald stat­ed that this is usu­al­ly the case in any cre­ative piece of work that a di­rec­tor takes on. He ad­mit­ted, "I find it un­bear­able to sit and watch all the mis­takes in one of my films in front of an au­di­ence." He con­tin­ued, "The last time I tried to watch it [Mar­ley] was at the world pre­miere at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val in Feb­ru­ary and I got about half an hour in but I was sweat­ing so much and was so un­com­fort­able that I had to leave." In par­tic­u­lar, he stat­ed that he some­times re­grets cut­ting the run­ning time of the film from three hours to two hours and twen­ty-five min­utes. "I wish I could put back in all the things I took out and maybe show it in two parts." Con­trast­ing­ly, Mac­don­ald stat­ed that he was pleased with what he de­scribed as the "clas­si­cal, sim­ple style" of the film. He as­sert­ed that he re­frained from im­pos­ing too much of him­self in­to the film and that most of his im­po­si­tions were strict­ly ed­i­to­r­i­al ones. He went on to ex­plain, "I saw the film very much as an oral his­to­ry of Bob Mar­ley." The film, as he de­scribed it, is more like a lit­er­ary ar­ti­fact than a film ar­ti­fact in that it is con­sists of nu­mer­ous ver­bal ac­counts by those who knew Bob Mar­ley best.

In re­sponse to be­ing ques­tioned about his in­ter­est in the life of this Ja­maican icon, Mac­don­ald in­sist­ed that it would be dif­fi­cult to cre­ate a mean­ing­ful doc­u­men­tary with­out "deep pas­sion­ate in­ter­est" in­to the sub­ject. He opined that the film in­dus­try can be a rather un­pleas­ant busi­ness to work in due to dif­fi­cul­ties with fund­ing, un­avoid­able com­pro­mis­es which neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the film as well as long, ex­haust­ing film­ing sched­ules. This so­lid­i­fied his as­ser­tion that the ba­sis of this Mar­ley doc­u­men­tary was to be en­light­ened and to clar­i­fy the many mis­con­cep­tions sur­round­ing Mar­ley's life. Mac­don­ald ex­plained, "That's why I?left my voice in the film so that hope­ful­ly you hear me in­quir­ing and be­ing cu­ri­ous. I think it makes you feel like the film mak­er is learn­ing as he goes along just like you [the view­ers] are." Sim­i­lar­ly, Mac­don­ald stat­ed that the pro­duc­er of the doc­u­men­tary Steve Bing was al­so ex­treme­ly pas­sion­ate about Bob Mar­ley and was thus will­ing to pro­vide what­ev­er fund­ing was nec­es­sary to en­sure that "Mar­ley" was a qual­i­ty piece of work. He stat­ed that he was for­tu­nate in that fund­ing for the film was nev­er re­al­ly an is­sue. "When­ev­er I told him that I need­ed to buy the rights to an­oth­er song and it could cost an­oth­er $25,000, he would say, 'This is for his­to­ry, Kevin. I?don't want you to be held back by mon­ey.'" Mac­don­ald ad­mit­ted that he felt added pres­sure to en­sure that the film was worth all the mon­ey, time and ef­fort that was in­vest­ed in­to it. Ad­mit­ting that there was more fi­nan­cial risk in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of a doc­u­men­tary as com­pared to a fea­ture film, he stat­ed that this was "nerve-rack­ing but en­er­gis­ing al­so." Among chal­lenges he faced, was at­tempt­ing to make his doc­u­men­tary stand out among the many doc­u­men­taries that have been pro­duced about the singer-song­writer dur­ing his life and af­ter his death 1981.

While the film­mak­er ad­mit­ted that this wor­ried him for quite some time, he said that he even­tu­al­ly in­ter­viewed a few peo­ple who of­fered in­sight in­to Bob's life from a very dif­fer­ent an­gle. Among these, he said, was an in­ter­view with Bob's half-sis­ter, Con­stance Mar­ley. In a rather grip­ping mo­ment in the movie, Con­stance lis­tens to Mar­ley's melod­ic song Cor­ner­stone. The lyrics are, "The stone that the builder re­fused will al­ways be the head cor­ner­stone," left Con­stance to pon­der whether or not the song was root­ed in the fact that Bob was de­nied by the fam­i­ly of his fa­ther Nor­val Mar­ley. She comes to the rev­e­la­tion that iron­i­cal­ly enough, it is the mu­lat­to child who was re­nounced by his fa­ther's fam­i­ly who even­tu­al­ly made the Mar­ley name a glob­al­ly-recog­nised one. Mac­don­ald did not ne­glect to men­tion that the doc­u­men­tary Mar­ley along with its sound­track has done ex­cep­tion­al­ly well since its re­lease ear­li­er this year. On­line rat­ings and crit­i­cal re­views have been large­ly pos­i­tive and the film con­tin­ues to gain pop­u­lar­i­ty though it has not yet re­ceived any awards. Mac­don­ald re­ceived the Acad­e­my Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary for his riv­et­ing 1999 doc­u­men­tary One Day in Sep­tem­ber which dealt with the mur­der of Is­raeli ath­letes at the 1972 Mu­nich Olympics. See page six for the sched­ule of films be­ing shown at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val to­day.