Lennie Little-White | Tangible investments needed for Jamaican film industry

‘Lights, camera, action’ ... there is a joyful expectation and magic whenever we hear those three words in sequence. Jamaica-based filmmakers are rightfully excited by the government’s announcement of a film development fund, but let us not count the chickens before the eggs are even laid.

My cursory understanding of the preliminary rules is that the government expects the fund to support commercially viable productions rather than esoteric, art pieces that end up with intellectual glory in academic film festivals. One billion over two years is a lot of change and we cannot afford to fail or it will become a one-time gesture.

The word “film” has become generic for any medium that records visual and audio elements. My use of the word “film” in this overview applies to all media which capture visuals and audio. The fund will provide financing for a variety of content. My primary concern in this article is feature film and video productions and their offshoots.

Do we have the production personnel and equipment in Jamaica to create film productions that will become financially viable in the international marketplace?

I answer with a resounding “yes” if I am only looking at the surface. For us to make an objective assessment of the possibility of viable financial productions, we must look at the historical context of indigenous film productions within Jamaica.

After more than 50 years, The Harder They Come remains the most critically successful indigenous Jamaican production. Despite its tremendous success at home, this movie never made a profit nor even “break-even” in its local exhibition. I got that from the mouth of the director – the late Perry Henzell.

Since that landmark production, a few other theatrical feature films with Jamaican directors/producers have never come close to making a profit in Jamaica. These include Smile Orange, Ghett-a-Life, Children of Babylon, Countryman, Destiny, Glory to Gloriana, Third World Cop, among others.

Why this constant failure of net returns to Jamaican producers of indigenous films? The answer is simple – monopolistic distribution and exhibition. For generations, there has been only one surviving cinema chain-cum-distributor in Jamaica.

TWIN HEADED MONSTER

This twin-headed monster represents all the major North American studios which release over 100 feature films each year. This is bread and butter for the only game in town which has a line-up of international movies which must be shown almost simultaneously with North American release dates.

This means that there is a very small window for local productions to build an audience before they are pulled from the screen. To make things worse, the net returns to Jamaican feature films is a disgrace. Talking from personal experience, I have made three theatrical features and I have never been able to get more than 20 per cent out of each box office dollar. How come?

Here is how the returns go. The cinema-house like Carib takes 50 per cent of all gate receipts. The owner of the major cinema chain owns a sister company which is the exclusive distributor. Of the remaining 50 per cent, this distributor creams off as much as 30 per cent for its fee as distributor plus marketing. I spoke with one producer who told me that his movie ended up with 30 cents out of the dollar – an exception to the rule. Lucky for him.

Let this be a warning to all who have ears to hear. Feature film production will never be viable if the movie cannot turn a profit or at least break even in its domestic market. Movies in India, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, France, all have the possibility of breaking even at home. Of course, they have much larger populations. Until we can level the playfield in Jamaica, many filmmakers will end up with great media hype, but no money to settle production costs.

Gone are the days when the Motion Picture Industry Encouragement Act allowed generous tax write-offs for local productions. This was a casualty of the IMF Agreement of 2011. Without this escape valve, there are very few investors with deep pockets willing to invest in local features. So how do we bell the cat? Develop alternate distributors and cinemas to counterbalance the monopolistic giant which is the only game in town.

There was a time when movie houses were giant structures seating hundreds of viewers. This prototype died over the last two decades. Today, new cinemas are much smaller seating even fewer than 100 people. Digital screens and computers have made projectors and celluloid collector’s items. Startup exhibition costs are a fraction of what they used to be.

SMALL PLAYHOUSES

When Trevor Rhone returned to Jamaica from theatre school in England, the only game in town for local plays was either the Ward or the Little Theatre which required full houses to pay the exorbitant rental fee. I was among a group of people whom Trevor convinced that very small playhouses were the answer to counteract the big boys. So, he and Yvonne Jones Brewster converted an old garage on Oxford Road to become the Barn Theatre with limited and crude seating, with no air conditioning and the usual comfort amenities.

Trevor’s Theatre 77 company became the prototype for boutique theatres which spawned Green Gables, Stage One, Centrestage, Stages and New Kingston Theatre among others. Out of this groundswell of productions, we developed a box office stars like Audrey Reid, Camille Davis, Deon Silvera, Shebada, Glen Campbell, Bad Boy Trevor – to name a few.

This also spawned a plethora of new directors to include Ed Wallace, Ginger Knight, Louis Marriot, Trevor Nairne, Douglas Prout, Hugh King, David Tulloch, and Ralph Holness.

All this to say, that because of the foresight of Trevor Rhone, Jamaica’s theatre is alive and well with the plethora of viable boutique playhouses in our midst. The same prototype must be developed for film. A portion of the recently announced Film Fund should be earmarked to assist new investors who want to open small cinemas in plazas or storefronts and lessen the stranglehold of the cyclops who is now a roadblock to commercially viable film production in Jamaica.

Another piece of advice based on my own experience is that the decision-makers should put greater emphasis on made-for-television productions rather than cinematic features. Thanks to JBC, Lime Tree Lane and Oliver at Large ran for years providing jobs for many Jamaicans. The undisputed king of them all is Royal Palm Estate which ran for 20 years in its initial run in Jamaica and has been broadcast in 18 other countries to date. Royal Palm Estate employed over 500 actors and over 50 crews for location filming.

If we are encouraging people to go into farming there must be a ready market for their produce – whether in supermarkets, hotels, village markets and manufacturers who make juices using fresh local produce. If reasonable distribution outlets do not exist to allow local commercial productions to break even, the government can kiss the Film Fund goodbye. At the outset, avenues like Netflix and other streaming outlets are only a dream in the short-term. They are not the immediate solution to make commercial filmmaking viable in Jamaica. Memba say Lennie did tell you.

Lennie Little-White has been an independent film producer for more than 50 years. Besides theatrical movies, he has made feature documentaries and television series. He is one of the three founders of CVM-TV. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com