BC Pires

My name is Nadis­sa Aisha Haynes and I made a mock­u­men­tary about a Tri­ni/Ja­maican singer who thinks he is the biggest star in the Caribbean and the world. I re­cent­ly found out I co­in­ci­den­tal­ly had the Prophet's fourth wife's name and she was aged be­tween nine and 12 on her wed­ding night. She might be turn­ing in her grave now be­cause I am 31 years and not mar­ried yet. Maybe 31 is the new 12? In which case, I bet­ter get en­gaged quick! I was born in Port-of-Spain but moved to San Juan as a ba­by and that's where I con­sid­er my­self as com­ing from. I was al­ways a tomboy. Play­ing mar­ble pitch in the dirt and run­ning races bare­foot­ed on the pitch with the neigh­bour­hood boys.I have five broth­ers and one sis­ter. My moth­er and fa­ther have grown to be my friends over the years and their sup­port is what I val­ue the most. I don't have kids my­self and hon­est­ly I'm not sure I want to. You know how ex­pen­sive them is? I was raised An­gli­can but don't ap­pre­ci­ate re­li­gion as much any­more and I think my faith in God is stronger be­cause of it. I worked for nine years, build­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the cor­po­rate world but, dur­ing that time, I went to New York Film Acad­e­my and fell in love with di­rect­ing. I quit my job to at­tend UWI and I'm cur­rent­ly study­ing a BA in Film Pro­duc­tion and Stud­ies to grad­u­ate in Oc­to­ber. My school days weren't fun. I was a nerd. Didn't have much friends in sec­ondary school, so I took to writ­ing. I used to write po­ems, sto­ries etc and I read a lot of books. I loved to day­dream and I be­lieve peo­ple thought I was weird. All that changed when I did A Lev­els. I was free to ex­press my­self and stu­dents were more ma­ture at that stage so they ac­tu­al­ly lis­tened to what I had to say. My favourite sub­ject was lit­er­a­ture, es­pe­cial­ly Samuel Selvon. A Brighter Sun is my favourite book.

I al­ways joke that I quite en­joy men pay­ing for my meals at restau­rants and open­ing the door for me, why should that change? In re­al­i­ty I don't think women and men are com­plete equals as cit­i­zens in our so­ci­ety to­day. I think re­spect for each oth­er as hu­man be­ings is what the both sex­es should fo­cus on. A woman's place should be wher­ev­er she wants it to be once she feels it in her heart. I al­ways won­dered why all Eu­ro­peans on­ly talked about the weath­er in day to day con­ver­sa­tion; now that I'm in Eng­land, I know why: it so freak­ing cold! British peo­ple are po­lite but they are not friend­ly and that's a big dif­fer­ence. I've had my share of fish and chips and bangers and mash and that is no way bet­ter than two dou­bles with slight pep­per and a fresh co­conut wa­ter to wash it down. Even though I watch films to re­lax I can nev­er watch films like an or­di­nary film­go­er. Even those aw­ful pre­dictable Hol­ly­wood films, I dis­sect, as painful as it is. I fo­cus on the edit­ing, score, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sto­ry. Which I think may an­noy some of my friends, but I can't help it.

I lis­ten to all types of mu­sic but usu­al­ly the clas­sics like David Bowie, Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Re­vival, the Bea­t­les etc. I love ear­ly dance hall. Yel­low­man is one of my favourite artists. I have many favourite di­rec­tors but the one that in­spired me to get in­to this busi­ness was Fer­nan­do Meirelles, who di­rect­ed City of God. Af­ter watch­ing that film there was no turn­ing back for me. I thought, "This is what film should be!" My favourite genre is dra­ma. My "biggest in­flu­ence" is not a per­son but a style called Dog­ma 95, de­vel­oped in 1995 by two Dan­ish film­mak­ers, Lars Von Tri­er and Thomas Vin­ter­berg, that ex­clud­ed the use of elab­o­rate spe­cial ef­fects or tech­nol­o­gy. It gave me hope as a Caribbean film­mak­er. Even if I couldn't af­ford a Hol­ly­wood bud­get, my film could still be an amaz­ing thought-pro­vok­ing piece. I do think that film­mak­ers can sur­vive in Trinidad but we have to learn how to mar­ket our films in Trinidad's unique sit­u­a­tion. We have to make all as­pects of the busi­ness work for us. Take I'm San­tana-The Movie, di­rect­ed by one of my class­mates. The char­ac­ter was made pop­u­lar on the Web and now it is show­ing in lo­cal cin­e­mas to sold out crowds. Pashan of the Froot was a Doc­u­men­tary class as­sign­ment. I thought "Wouldn't a Caribbean ver­sion of Bo­rat be fun­ny?"

Post pro­duc­tion was hell. I thought about giv­ing up. I had no time to judge whether or not it was good, I just had to be sure that I could be proud of it. I had no idea peo­ple would re­spond to it like they did. Be­ing cho­sen to open the T&T Film Fes­ti­val for 2011 was re­al­ly the vic­to­ry for me. Hope­ful­ly you will be see­ing the sec­ond in­stall­ment of Pashan Froot's jour­ney to star­dom in 2012. The best thing about mak­ing my film was the peo­ple I worked with. Every­one be­lieved in me. I al­so learnt a lot about my ca­pa­bil­i­ties and weak­ness­es. The worst part was work­ing with the star him­self. He's very de­mand­ing and lives in his own bub­ble. A Tri­ni is a per­son who nev­er lets any­one get them down. They broke, but they still lim­ing, they sad, but they still par­ty­ing. Trinidad and To­ba­go is my in­spi­ra­tion, it's my home and the place where my sto­ries are from. With­out it I don't ex­ist.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com