I wouldn’t mind seeing this movie, Guiana 1838
Generations of children have asked the question, yet only those who went through it fully know the ordeal that was indentureship.Next month, the award winning feature film Guiana 1838 will be shown in local theatres. Its aim is to portray the lives of these workers in a way never before told.
Thoroughly researched and painstakingly documented, writer and director Rohit Jagessar hopes that local audiences will receive the movie in the same manner as US viewers have done.
Of the genesis of the docudrama, first time filmmaker Jagessar said: “My grandmother used to tell me stories of how they came on ships from India to the West Indies. She came in 1891. She was indentured on a plantation in Guyana. She would tell me how the Colonial masters treated them. In Trinidad the same story happened-slavery was abolished and the Indians were brought here to labour on the plantations. I wanted to tell the story.”
He continued: “So many children, parents as well would want to know how they came to the West Indies. They would want to know what really happened in the nineteenth century. This film deals with that. It focuses on the people of the West Indies-Africans and Indians-in a well balanced cinematic experience.”
Jagessar started writing, developing and researching the project seven years ago. He revealed that he pieced together about 50,000 pages of literature including ship routes, maps, illustrations, stories, British parliamentary papers and documents from Calcutta and Uttar Pradesh.
Physical implementation, just as the brain work behind it all, proved to be a gargantuan undertaking.
“I shot the film last year on a 6,000 acre sugar plantation. I brought about 15 tonnes of production equipment including two 40-foot trailers and generators and 60 foreign technicians and actors.”
He added: “In Guyana there is no infrastructure for film making. You have to create it. Farook (Juman) was the production co-ordinator. He went ahead and set things up. He did a magnificent job. He made my work easier. It’s not easy though. Making a film is like going to war. Every day you wake up in the barracks ready to fight. It’s a wonderful experience though.”
The director had as much infrastructure as possible in that era recreated.
“The overseer’s mansion, the slave huts, the first ship that brought Indians to the West Indies -the Hesperus. That arrived on May 15, 1838 in Guyana. The Fatel Rozack brought Indians for the first time to Trinidad on May 30, 1845. I had to research the whole period, piece it together and dramatise it. It was a huge canvass to cover.”
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