From Belmont to Beetham Gardens to Morvant and the hills of Laventille, the East Port-of-Spain area, once known as Yoruba village holds an important place in T&T history. The predominantly Afro-Trinidadian area gave the world steelpan, mas extraordinaire George Bailey and master artist Leroy Clarke. Yet, the culture-rich area also holds stories of high crime activity, poverty and neglect. A balanced view of Yoruba village is set to be exposed to the world in the form of a documentary film on the community. A film meant to show different sides of the people, culture and heritage of the Yoruba people and T&T as a whole. One of the producers of the film, Oba Kiteme spoke with T&T Guardian about the reason behind making the film and what audiences would gain from seeing it.
Kiteme said he felt the film was necessary and important to the development of East Port-of-Spain. He said the Minister of Finance had spoken about making East Port-of-Spain a heritage village, but hadn’t outline what he meant. Kiteme believed it was important for the community to have a say and define what a heritage village was, and so the premise for a film on the Yoruba village was born. The film began shooting on May 12 with a pilgrimage from Tokyo panyard to Yoruba square, along with a traditional Yoruba masquerade ceremony called Egungun. While the title of the film specifies Yoruba village, Kiteme said the film’s focus would be on all the African villages that contributed to the development of T&T. He felt that media throughout the years had painted a picture of East Port-of-Spain as hooligans and people who craved handouts, but the film, he said, would make a statement.
The film will attempt to provide a balanced view for an audience that has been bombarded with negatives and “misinformation.” It would show that the people of East Port-of-Spain contributed significantly to the growth of T&T. “The dirt they used to fill the land where the treasury building now rests was dirt taken from East Port-of-Spain,” he said, adding that several major players in the entertainment industry hailed from the area. “When foreigners hear of T&T, they hear of David Rudder and Calypso Rose, they don’t hear of Manning and Rowley. “Entertainers are the people who make T&T famous and we, Yoruba people have contributed greatly to that,” said Kiteme. He said the purpose of the film was to provide dialogue between the past and present, and between those on the outside and those on the inside of East Port-of-Spain.
Kiteme felt that residents of East Port-of-Spain were too often taught to be ashamed of their heritage and community. He said the film would do its part to tell a different story about residents, and to offer them a different way of looking at themselves, to see their ancestors in a different light. He said it would also be used to highlight the measure of neglect of this area of the nation’s capital. Without hesitation, Kiteme said he believed the reason for the communities being neglected was that they were predominantly African areas. He lamented that the people of East Port-of-Spain had not given themselves an identity, and had instead allowed outsiders to label them. This label was one filed with negatives and derision.
Asked to describe the true identity of the East Port-of-Spain residents, Kiteme said they were and ought to see themselves as heroic survivors of a barrage of sustained and prolonged victimisation. Yet, he stressed that it was important that they did not see themselves as victims, but as everyday heroes in a biased and negligent society.
Kiteme and his team of cultural aficionados are hoping to wrap up filming of the documentary this year.
They have solicited funding from a number of private and Government agencies, and have so far received funding from the National Lotteries Control Board and the Ministry of Arts and Multiculturalism. However, Kiteme pointed out that the funding they had received was a drop in the bucket, amounting to less than ten per cent of the budget needed to fully fund the film. He is hoping that other organisations would recognise the cultural and sociological value of the film project, and show support to the project.
A community East Port-of-Spain, he said, had contributed a lot to the nation but had received very little, and he is hoping that the Yoruba Village documentary can do its part to help turn the situation around.
