The first public cut of Mas Man, Dalton Narine's documentary about Peter Minshall, was screened at the T&T Film Festival in 2009, the first year a cash prize was awarded by a jury. As it happens, I sat on that first jury and, along with film critics and filmmakers, considered the films long-listed for the prize. Mas Man was one such. It did not win. Indeed, if memory serves (and I confess mine is more likely to spit in my soup), that first cut of Mas Man did not even get on to the shortlist, and there was at least one jury member-me-who felt it should not even have been on the long list. I wrote the jury report (in accordance with the directions of the jury) that year and Mas Man drew some of the jury's sharpest comments. The Trinidadians involved were unanimous that it did not do Minshall justice. It was technically unsound and, despite its visibly close access, did not get into the living artist's creative process.
The filmmaker took his blows, not to heart, but back to the drawing board. Two years later, after significant editing and the inclusion of material that had been omitted in the haste to get the first cut finished in time for the TTFF, he produced another, presumably the final, version of his documentary. He called it Mas Man-The Complete Work to distinguish it from its predecessor, but he might as well have called it Mas Man-The Good One. He addressed the criticisms made of his film and, largely speaking, corrected them. Certainly the technical flaws over which he had control-the jumpy, MTV-style editing that was accidental, not deliberate, the abrupt changes from one person speaking to another. The archival footage was still blurry, at times, but the filmmaker was now using that footage to illustrate the film, not extend its runtime.
Of course, it still did not do justice to Minshall. Nothing ever will; not even Minshall himself; but it was a far, far better film, one that the Trinidadian could watch, not just without steupsing, but with pleasure. Where I'd sat seething through the first cut, I sat enthralled through the Complete Work. It is an entirely different film, because it's actually good. But Mas Man-The Complete Work retained the major creative failing of the original Mas Man: it did not get into the living artist's creative process. Mas Man-Special 3-Disk Bundle, released in July, goes some way to addressing that shortfall by the inclusion of its second disc, Peter Minshall Uncut Unplugged Unapologetic. Although marred by the camera's time stamp obscuring the image partially, this disc is 95 minutes of Minshall directly addressing the viewer (via Narine's camera) and speaking plainly about his creative process.
Though much of it arises out of discussion of the last mas he brought, The Sacred Heart, the inability of the artist to be anything but honest about his art makes for revealing cinema. The final disc in Special 3-Disk Bundle contains about 110 minutes of extras of widely disparate length. Picoplat, eg, is 52 seconds long. An individual recollection of the Lost Tribe runs for three minutes and a surprise David Rudder live performance of High Mas on the Savannah stage on Carnival Tuesday goes on for six-and-a-half. The other three extras are considerably longer assessments by Minshall and others (including the late Alwin Chow Lin On and Minshall's most enduring king, Peter Samuel) of some of three Minshall bands, Jungle Fever (40 mins), Zodiac (26 mins) and Carnival of the Sea (33 mins). Mas Man-Special 3-Disk Bundle can be purchased online at www.masmanthemovie.com
