Kali­fa S Clyne

A doc­u­men­tary pro­mot­ing reg­gae and so­cial icon, the late Bob Mar­ley's vi­sion of a unit­ed Africa fea­tured dur­ing We Beat cel­e­bra­tions in St James last Tues­day night.The We­Beat film night, which fea­tured a full length doc­u­men­tary and a short film, was host­ed by the T&T Film Fes­ti­val (TTFF) and took place at the St James Am­phithe­atre. The full length doc­u­men­tary called Africa Unite saw three gen­er­a­tions of Mar­leys as they jour­neyed through Africa for the an­nu­al Africa Unite Con­cert in 2005 for what would have been Bob Mar­ley's 60th birth­day.The doc­u­men­tary al­so fea­tured footage of live per­for­mances by Mar­ley and fans could be seen singing the lyrics while danc­ing to the dif­fer­ent beats.

The 12-hour con­cert, which took place in Ethiopia, was at­tend­ed by more than 300,000 peo­ple from around the world. The doc­u­men­tary was pro­duced by Stephanie Black and ex­ec­u­tive pro­duced by Ri­ta Mar­ley, Cedel­la Mar­ley, Dan­ny Glover and Joslyn Barnes. The free movie night, was mod­er­ate­ly pop­u­lat­ed as pa­trons ven­tured out to see the Mar­ley film and a lo­cal­ly pro­duced short film by di­rec­tor Leroy Smart called The Sus­pect. Those who at­tend­ed al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of in­ter­act­ing with Don­isha Pren­der­gast, grand­daugh­ter of Bob Mar­ley. Pren­der­gast in­ter­act­ed with the crowd, not on­ly in in­tro­duc­ing the film but al­so hold­ing a short dis­cus­sion about her ex­pe­ri­ences while mak­ing the doc­u­men­tary with her fam­i­ly.

In an in­ter­view with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian, Pren­der­gast de­scribed the jour­ney doc­u­ment­ed in the film as a re­mark­able ex­pe­ri­ence. She shared that her fam­i­ly was ex­treme­ly close and de­scribed them as a unit. "My fam­i­ly is like an army and we were cul­tured to be 'Jah' sol­diers," she said. Pren­der­gast was al­so in T&T to pro­mote a doc­u­men­tary film that she co-di­rect­ed. The film ti­tled Ras­ta: A Soul's Jour­ney, fea­tures Pren­der­gast on her jour­ney of self dis­cov­ery as she search­es for what it re­al­ly means to be a Ras­ta in to­day's so­ci­ety. Her doc­u­men­tary is set to pre­miere at the Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val in Sep­tem­ber and Pren­der­gast said she was look­ing for­ward to re­turn­ing to Trinidad so it could be screened at the T&T Film Fes­ti­val lat­er this year.