Er­line An­drews

The Mil­i­tant, a so­cial­ist week­ly pub­lished in the US and dis­trib­uted through­out the world, set up a booth at Brook­lyn's an­nu­al Grena­da Day Fes­ti­val in Ju­ly to share its ideas and sell sub­scrip­tions and re­lat­ed lit­er­a­ture.Al­li­son Math­lin, who–ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle in the mag­a­zine–is a found­ing mem­ber of Grena­da's rev­o­lu­tion­ary par­ty New Jew­el Move­ment (NJM), stopped by and bought a book col­lec­tion of Mau­rice Bish­op's speech­es and in­ter­views called Mau­rice Bish­op Speaks and an is­sue of the New In­ter­na­tion­al that con­tained the es­say The Sec­ond As­sas­si­na­tion of Mau­rice Bish­op, by Steve Clark.

Both were pub­lished in 1980s, not long af­ter Bish­op, the Grena­di­an prime min­is­ter and leader of the NJM, was killed and the coun­try in­vad­ed by US forces, end­ing the 1979 rev­o­lu­tion that brought Bish­op to pow­er."In Grena­da you can't find books of Mau­rice in the book­stores, on­ly in the mu­se­ums," Math­lin said, a stun­ning de­c­la­ra­tion, con­sid­er­ing the im­pact the coup, the sub­se­quent Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment and its bloody demise had and con­tin­ues to have on the small coun­try.When the film For­ward Ever: The Killing of a Rev­o­lu­tion–the first to doc­u­ment the coup and its af­ter­math–pre­miered at the UWI Film Build­ing last Sep­tem­ber it was to a stand­ing-room on­ly au­di­ence. Grena­di­ans in at­ten­dance thanked di­rec­tor Bruce Padding­ton for what was for many their first ex­pe­ri­ence hear­ing de­tails of the events."We've nev­er re­al­ly had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be ex­posed to the truth of what re­al­ly hap­pened," said one young woman.

Padding­ton re­cent­ly showed the film–a half hour short­er than the pre­mier's run­ning time of two and a half hours–dur­ing the launch of the DVD at the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Un­esco in St Clair. It had been rain­ing heav­i­ly but yet again the room was packed."Every time I show it, it's packed out au­di­ences," said Padding­ton, who's tak­en the film to 15 coun­tries since its pre­miere in T&T. "To­day there's floods in town and it's pour­ing rain, and there is not an emp­ty seat avail­able."Caribbean peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly those abroad, have "a fan­tas­tic de­sire . . . to see records, films, sto­ries about the re­gion," said Padding­ton."And this is one of the most hor­rif­ic things that hap­pened in the re­gion–killing a prime min­is­ter and his col­leagues in cold blood," he added. "The his­to­ry re­al­ly hasn't been writ­ten, es­pe­cial­ly not from a Caribbean point of view."

Padding­ton knows on­ly too well the chal­lenges of mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary film. Af­ter 40 years in the busi­ness, For­ward Ever is on­ly his sec­ond fea­ture-length film. He's worked on hun­dreds of short­er films and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions.With­in the past few years the film in­dus­try has been giv­en a boost with the in­tro­duc­tion of film de­grees at UWI, the of­fer­ing of grants by the Film Com­pa­ny and the avail­abil­i­ty of cheap­er, more ac­ces­si­ble dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Nev­er­the­less, chal­lenges–par­tic­u­lar­ly for big projects–re­main."A prop­er doc­u­men­tary can cost a lot of mon­ey–we're talk­ing maybe US$300,000," he said. "While a lot of good things have been done, we would like the gov­ern­ment to in­vest even more mon­ey in­to this very im­por­tant sec­tor."

For­ward Ever was spon­sored by the Film Com­pa­ny and UWI. Padding­ton said he's hop­ing to get lo­cal TV sta­tions to buy the rights to air it, as op­posed to his giv­ing it to them for free. The film has been ac­quired by a dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in the US and one in Eu­rope. He ex­pects in­ter­est in the top­ic to mean DVD sales will do well. "It's very hard to make mon­ey [from doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing], but I'm try­ing to at least cov­er my costs on this film," he said. "And may be if there is any mon­ey [left] over it will go to­wards the next film."He sees pos­si­bil­i­ties in the ef­forts of oth­er lo­cal film­mak­ers. The pre­mier show­ing of Pan! Our Mu­si­cal Odyssey will next month open the an­nu­al T&T Film Fes­ti­val, which Padding­ton found­ed.

Pan's pro­duc­ers used crowd-fund­ing to raise mon­ey on­line to help mar­ket the film. It's al­so a cross-na­tion­al ef­fort–the writer is Trinida­di­an, the pro­duc­ers and di­rec­tors are French–which opened op­por­tu­ni­ties in Eu­rope, in­clud­ing a well-re­ceived show­ing at Sun­ny Side of the Doc in La Rochelle, France.Such co-pro­duc­tions may be one way for­ward, said Padding­ton."I think what we need to do is de­vel­op more links with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­ers who would be ex­cit­ed to work with us on Caribbean films," he said.

CON­TACT: grenadamar­ket.com, ttfilm­fes­ti­val.com, face­book.com/for­warde­v­er­film