2 months ago
26
Cue the next scene in Rebecca Williams’ filmmaking journey.
Invigorated by her working trip to the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland last summer, the budding Jamaican feature film director is inching ever closer to seeing her dream project, a supernatural movie based on Jamaican folklore, come to life.
Williams now has an established producer Rob Maylor, who helped shepherd director Storm Saulter’s Sprinter to the big screen and Netflix, onboard, and she’s currently awaiting word on her application to the Jamaica Screen Development Initiative (JSDI) for funding assistance to jumpstart the horror movie.
Back in August, Maylor and Williams travelled to Locarno, where they took a deep dive into the celluloid process and soaked up the art form’s sensibilities through workshops and film screenings facilitated by their European hosts.
Of the experiential time spent at the week-long festival, Williams recounted that her main takeaway from attending the week-long event was the different approaches to filmmaking between Europeans and Americans.
“That different perspective was really important for me to hear, especially because my producer and I have an American filmmaking background. It was really, really valuable to get a European perspective because I think to Europeans, movies are art and in America, honestly, movies are money.”
Elaborating, she explained that while she’s cognisant of the presence of American filmmakers who make artful work. “When we think about the machine of Hollywood, we are thinking about getting butts in seats in theatres and selling tickets. Whereas, I go to Locarno and watch a three-hour experimental film and everyone is engaged. In America, I don’t think those films would have that pull. There is a lot of experimentation happening in Europe while in America, they usually play it safe.”
Williams summed up her second time at the film festival thus: “It [Locarno] definitely has that vibe of up-and-coming people they are really supporting, but also they are very established directors [such as] Alfonso Cuarón (the Academy Award-winning Mexican director of the 2013 box-office science-fiction hit film, Gravity). He was there getting a Lifetime Achievement Award, and I remember in 2022 when I first went, Bullet Train, a mainstream action movie, showed and the film’s lead actor Brad Pitt was there, so it has a range.”
Continuing, she told The Sunday Gleaner: “A person like me can be invited, and Brad can be invited there, and it’s all in this Swiss town in the gorgeous summertime. Everyone is walking or on their bikes, and they are jumping in the water and it’s good vibes all around.”
She divulged that the primary goal is “Rob and I want to shoot a short version of the film for proof of concept this year, so we are hoping to finalise our financing soon, and hopefully in a few months, we can start shooting”.
In between the pregnant pause of whether governmental support will be forthcoming, Williams is open to exploring the possibility of crowd-funding to help bankroll her horror debut, tentatively titled The Periphery. “I think raising money is a way for people to feel very involved in the film like they would have helped make it. I would love to create merchandise and make it more interactive and I think crowd-funding would definitely help with the marketing side of it all,” she explained.
Meanwhile, Williams’ creative collaborator Maylor shed light on the point of attraction that led to their partnership. “I have been asking local filmmakers to develop horror and genre films for the past several years with a good concept or conceit. It is a great way for an emerging filmmaker to get a project made without the need for celebrity attachments or a huge budget,” he noted. “The perspective Rebecca offered in her short film, Out of Many set her apart from many of the other projects that I had viewed and the screenplay for The Periphery took a familiar horror film set-up that [is] attuned to Jamaica’s cultural specificity and her own family history resulted in something unique I believe could appeal to audiences worldwide.”
Speaking to The Sunday Gleaner last Sunday, on the set of an upcoming miniseries, Maylor said what he has enjoyed most “about working with Rebecca has been first and foremost the clarity of vision she possesses for telling this story and her desire not to skip any steps in the process of fulfilling her dream to make her first feature. The director-producer relationship works best I think when both parties are not afraid to challenge each other and be open to other opinions to make the best possible work.”
Citing an instance of their working rapport, Maylor shared that “early on we talked about how the project would fit into the horror genre we had been pitching and the potential “scares” in the script and while she was initially resistant to any ‘jumpscares’ as she did her research. Viewing several other projects, she then came up with scares that were still in line with who she was as an artist and helped elevate the project’s storytelling.”
Post-Locarno, Williams made changes to her script based on the fresh artistic insights gleaned. “I went back to the script and I felt the next draft was very different, ramping up what makes it weird and different and I think the movie is a better script now because of it. I think it’s just when you go outside of your own comfort zone, [you’re] sort of like ‘I can take more risks than I initially thought’,” she said.
She readily admits that horror did not pique her interest in the past. “Honestly, I used to avoid horror films, I thought they were gimmicky but when Get Out came out, I was like, horror can be something that is very different, so new-age horror has really inspired me to take on this genre ... literally, I thought it was the last thing I would do,” the 26-year-old creative shared.
Having pivoted from reticence to full-fledged activation, she explained: “A lot of horror directors are almost exclusively horror directors, but I don’t want to box myself in. I am excited to explore and I think it can be multi-layered and multi-dimensional, that’s what I am trying to accomplish in this genre.”
Shifting attention to the eventual casting process, Williams said, “In the film, there is an American and a Jamaican, two girls who are the protagonists. They are cousins. There’s an actress I would really love to have in the American role, that’s what I’m currently manifesting. I also really liked the actress who played Janet in Get Millie Black, Shernet Swearine. She was amazing. I was watching the show and I was only looking at her onscreen.”
And, what of location scouting? “We want to do Spanish Town, there is a house there I can use, We are exploring around Treasure Beach, any town that is enclosed and is sort of a walk in town,” she divulged.
As it stands, Maylor updated that “the project is in late-stage development. Following our trip to Locarno, several international production and distribution entities took an interest in the project and Rebecca’s career. These teams gave us story notes that would make the job of selling the projects and that we believe made the script stronger. We are currently looking to attach on-screen talent that will be involved with both [the] proof-of-concept short film and the feature. This is the same award-winning production model employed by fellow Caribbean director Stefon Bristol’s See You Yesterday and Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash. We cannot comment further on the specific relationships nurturing this project, but can say that we are all anxiously awaiting word from the JSDI so that we understand what support is available locally for the project and what gaps will need to be filled by the same potential partners.”
In the meantime, for the woman angling to see her big-screen ambitions soon realised, she’s keeping busy in the interim. There was an editorial shoot last year for Jamaican-born fine jewellery designer Symone Currie’s Metal x Wire.
“I am working right now on a documentary about carnival, sort of like a feminist lens on carnival and body image and how women prepare for carnival,” Williams shared.
“I am following my two friends who are service providers as the season gets busy. I thought it was such an interesting thing as someone who thinks of their own body image, and it’s like you have this day when you are on display, sort of in an empowering way by your own rules. That celebration is so beautiful, I want to look at how women feel about that display regardless of what other people say about their bodies.”
English (US) ·