J’can director duo bring ‘Trouble’ to Toronto

Cinema has had its fair share of influential partnerships. From the Wachowski siblings and the Daniels to the Russo and Coen brothers, these filmmaking duos have proven that sometimes two heads are better than one. Now, Jamaica has a director duo of its own to contend with. With the release of their short film Trouble, Jaime Grandison and Malik White are beginning to see the fruits of a friendship that has evolved into a creative partnership.

“We’ve been friends for coming up on two decades now and shared in the love of cinema and the love of music from then on,” Grandison told The Gleaner.

Their mutual passion for the arts was a basis for their connection but, where most friends would simply go to the cinema, Grandison and White thought to try their hands at making cinema.

“It started with a film that will never see the light of day, just sitting on my hard drive. If you look hard enough, it might be on YouTube, but I won’t give away any clues,” Grandison said.

The film in question, Tight, centres on a young woman’s experience with anxiety. While their first attempt may not have been worthy of the big screen, the nervous energy it explored remained a subject they were passionate enough to revisit in Trouble. Getting that film made, however, was another story.

“We wanted to submit to a festival, and the time was quickly approaching. We said, all right, we don’t have any money, [but] we know we have one committed actor in Sule Thelwell,” Grandison explained, adding, “He was in town working on another project, and we just stole him from that so we had him for one day. So, with those constraints, we said ‘Okay, one actor, one location’ and then built it from there.”

With the actor secured, attention turned to finding the right location, and White already had a particular spot in Hellshire, St Catherine in mind.

“There’s a specific location out in Hellshire that I’ve always wanted to do something at, and this was the perfect opportunity to do it ... . [It’s] very remote, like a two-minute dirt road to get there ...”

The filmmakers embraced the project’s constraints, using the opportunity to showcase a more remote side of Jamaica on screen.

“Anybody who sees the film can’t believe it was shot in Jamaica. We use our environment as a tool to help tell stories and, anywhere you look in Jamaica, you’re going to find somewhere beautiful,” Grandison added.

But it was the location’s more menacing quality that made it particularly suited to Trouble. Filmed during a particularly dry period, the landscape and John Crows overhead also helped thematically tell the story.

Built entirely around the “one actor, one location” constraint, Trouble follows a man in a red-and-white tracksuit stranded with only a car and cell phone as mysterious circumstances become increasingly complicated and treacherous.

The result is a gripping, visually striking film, with a style informed by some of the filmmakers’ favourite directors.

“The big one (influence) is the Coen brothers. We were watching a lot of that and talking about it leading up to when we had to do the film ... we wanted the movie to feel quick and fun ... we never really thought of Tarantino, but [he] ends up in there,” White explained.

Grandison chimed in, adding, “He [Tarantino] wasn’t a top-of-mind reference but, from the concept, it was like, ‘He has to be in a red suit’ ... and in that way it’s very Tarantino-esque ... with this retro car, it kind of pulls the film out of this modern era and feels very timeless.”

Also a music producer, Grandison played a hand in shaping the film’s sound:

“Once we had the basic beats of the story, it was ‘let’s get to cooking on how this thing sounds, how do we ground this in Jamaica, and add a component of anxiety and tension with the music’.”

Trouble has been selected for the Screen Share programme at the CaribbeanTales Film Festival in Toronto, where it will screen alongside other works from Caribbean filmmakers. For the director duo, the selection marks another step forward in their creative partnership.

“It’s pretty incredible. This is our first international film selection,” Grandison noted.

While he welcomes the recognition, Grandison’s confidence in their work predates the selection.

“Me personally I’m a very conceited gentleman. I believe in myself and our work to the nth degree,” Grandison said.

For White, the selection also comes after months of building an audience for Trouble, following an earlier festival rejection.

“We made the film for a festival and didn’t get in. After that, we linked up with Jordan Morrison for a film night who was in a similar predicament with his film Smile. So we sort of banded together and have been banded together ever since and developed a kind of grassroots campaign of sorts. By the time we got into Screen Share, it felt like the work we’d been doing had been paying off,” White said.

And with support from the CHASE Fund and Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO), they both travelled to Toronto on Monday for the festival. Looking ahead, Grandison and White are developing a feature film with the working title Nearby Bushes.

Damian Levy is a film critic and podcaster for Damian Michael Movies. entertainment@gleanerjm.com