Henzell takes new approach to film-making

• User-generated documentary a month into collection phase

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Film producer Justine Henzell has taken an unaccustomed approach to her latest project. Under normal circumstances, such as Ghett'A Life which premiered in Jamaica in July, she would be on location for the film's shooting.

For OnePeople, spearheaded by 1962 Productions Ltd in which Henzell partners with Zachary Harding, she will be clicking on received mail in her inbox until November 6, when submissions for her next project will end.

Henzell said the response to OnePeople, which is her first documentary as well as user-generated content project, is positive "as the global community is when it comes to a project about Jamaica" and shows "what invaluable goodwill Jamaica has around the world".

Since submissions were opened in August for celebrations of Jamaica's 49th year of Independence, most of the hopefuls of making the final cut have come from England.

For a project subtitled Out of Many, One Documentary, the most unusual place has been Poland. Guidelines on the website onepeopledocumentary.com state that "you can shoot anything you want that does not contain offensive, inappropriate or illegal content, including profanity, pornographic or sexual content, hateful content of any kind (including racist or sexist), content that promotes violence or harm to another living creature".

What to include

Persons are also asked to include one or more of a number of actions or answers to questions, such as show us how Jamaicans dance, say the National Motto 'Out of Many, One People', say 'yeah man' or 'no problem' and tell us the most important Jamaican living or dead.

The material which 1962 Productions receives will be edited to make a 90-minute documentary to premiere in Jamaica, the United States, Canada and England on Jamaica's Independence Day 2012.

The guidelines state that submitted videos must not "contain any music, either on the soundtrack to your video (the score) or playing in the background of your video (that is recorded simultaneously with the pictures) (known as source music), whether or not owned by you". Instead, the OnePeople soundtrack will be done in part through the same user-generated content process.

Free download

Henzell said producers "Sly and Robbie are creating a track especially for the project". It will be put up for free download and users can do anything they want with the music, then upload their modified songs, which will then go towards forming the OnePeople soundtrack.

After premiering "where Jamaicans are gathering to celebrate Jamaica's 50th on August 6", OnePeople will move on to television and video on demand, from which it is expected that funding will be generated. It is planned that some of the net profits will be used to establish Jamaica's first film fund.

At the Ghett'A Life Carib premiere, in a recorded message writer/director/producer Chris Browne urged "our Government to support our industry", to strong applause from the audience. In establishing the film fund, Henzell said "we believe that we must do what we can to support our creative industries and this is not meant to be instead of a government film fund, but in addition to a government-supported fund".

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture, Film Jamaica and Jamaica Trade and Invest all endorse OnePeople. Executive producer is Kevin MacDonald, who did the feature Last King of Scotland.

McDonald has a long history in documentaries, winning an Academy Award for One Day in September in 2000 and Marley, about the Tuff Gong, slated for release next year.

In 2010 he did Life in a Day, a documentary with user-generated content.

OnePeople has a positive thrust and Henzell said "there will be dark and serious moments in the documentary, because it is a serious piece of film-making, but the emphasis for me is on our accomplishments, that are disproportionate to our size".