"I have always seen myself as a filmmaker. It has been happening since 1990 when I did my first course in screenwriting at the Creative Production and Training Centre," Beale told The Sunday Gleaner. "It was my intention to go into movies." He has done movie projects before, but on a smaller scale. These include Only Love Knows, Desperate Decisions and Eve with Oliver Samuels.

Beale sees Bashment Granny coming at a time when the Jamaican film industry, which has been hiccuping along from The Harder They Come through Countryman, Dancehall Queen and the Flashpoint Film Festival, may just be hitting a particularly productive patch.

good films

"Chris Browne has a project he is writing that he is very serious about. Mary Wells has been doing Kingston Paradise, that seems very good, very positive. The subject matter and the location she chose says a lot about preserving our culture and heritage," Beale said.

However, he knows that a few good films do not make an industry and said "Carib had to get eight to 10 good movies coming out of Jamaica each year", further explaining that one movie will run for about six weeks. "It would do a lot, not only for the industry but for people going to the cinema," Beale said.

"Once we make movies that go past the Jamaican diaspora we are good. But it will take more than a few movies to do it," Beale said.

There has always been the issue of Government support for the film industry and Beale said "if you are going to go private you have to have the guts to do it. If you are going to borrow you can't use the move as collateral".

His position is "if I do something for myself I can to the government and say 'This is what I am doing. What can you do to help?'"

making the move

"We are growing in this industry. We can't start out by asking what people can do for us. We have to start out doing what we want to do," Beale said.

And he makes the bold declaration that the hallowed format of the movie industry, shooting on film, is "becoming obsolete. The quality is extremely good; there is nothing to match it. But what the patrons are seeing, they can't tell the difference between film (which is more expensive) and what is shot in the RED (a digital format of recording)". In addition, he said, a lot of Hollywood movies are being shot using that format.

He points out, too, that the digital format is used throughout the process of making, editing and showing a movie in many cases. Beale said the Bashment Granny movie "did not use tape at all. Strictly digital flow".

- M.C.