Talk about A Different World: from a teen stint in the Alvin Ailey dance troupe to the sitcom role in the Cosby spin-off that made her famous to show-stopping turns on stage in Grease and Chicago, actress Jasmine Guy has had a rich and varied career on the spotlight. But this year she’s taken on a brand-new behind-the-scenes role as the executive director of the Turks & Caicos International Film Festival.
The low-profile island, just a short plane ride from Miami, is one of the best kept secrets in the Caribbean, a poverty-free tropical hideaway with some of the most alluring white sand beaches in the world that has become a favored escape for elite travelers like Bruce Willis. Hoping to spread the word of its splendors and open its shores to even more visitors, Turks & Caicos has launched its own film festival, a celebration of the fusion of music and cinema with movies from around the world.
Guy, a devotee of the exotic getaway, tells Hollywood.com how she and the locals plan to deliver a dramatically different experience for film aficionados used to the snowy swagfest of Sundance and the glaring flashbulbs of Cannes.
Hollywood.com: So you must be getting excited about this film festival?
Jasmine Guy: Yes, it’s very exciting. It’s like having a baby. This is my first time being this involved with not only the film festival, but just with anything of this magnitude, because we’re bringing the movies down, but we’re also bringing in entertainment and things for people to do outside of the screenings like panel discussions and it’s much more involved than I thought it would be.
HW: How did you get involved with the island of Turks & Caicos and its festival?
JG: Well, I met the premier Michael Misick at The Trumpet Awards in Atlanta last year and he gave such a warm speech about his country and wanting people to come down to his island and the vision that he had for his people that I said to him, “I don’t know what I can do, but if there is any way that I can help with what you’re trying to do with the island, let me know.” He had in mind the film festival and I said, “Okay. I’ll do that.” So I went and talked to my husband who is an investment broker and I said, “Honey, if you do the business side…” And I got friend, Carolyn Lee, who produced Tupac: Resurrection, to do the film side. So the three of us started working on this about eleven months ago.
HW: How would you characterize the program that you’re putting together?
JG: Well, my first job was to find our niche in the film festival market, because there are so many film festivals and we wanted to stand out in a very special way, even if it meant maybe less films. So we’re doing 20 to 25 first-time screenings of music driven movies from all over the world. So the connecting theme there is music. The movies are either about music or they are driven by music in a very powerful way.
HW: And music has been a big part of your own career. Was that the reason for that first impulse to feature a marriage of cinema and music?
JG: It was. First I started with the performer kind of aspect of celebrating the performer that does everything. There are so many now, like Queen Latifah and Mos Def and Tupac and Will Smith–people who have been able to successfully translate their fame and talent to the other side, and then back with Jamie Foxx, who was acting in comedy and then back to the music side. So it started with that and we needed to broaden our scope, and we really wanted a more international feel and not just American. So that’s how we get the music-driven theme and there are so many great music driven movies like Coal Miner’s Daughter and The Rose and Purple Rain. Walk the Line and Ray, of course—those are the most obvious because they’re brand new, and Dreamgirls, which is coming out as well. But I didn’t want to do all musicals.
HW: Can you talk about how music is part of the culture in Turks & Caicos?
JG: Well, like all of the islands, music is part of the fabric of their culture, and far more so than television. They get most of their TV from satellite and from us, but their own sort of organic art form is music and dance. We have a film from Cuba, too, about the National Ballet Company of Cuba. So it talks to the islands in that that’s their art form. And in so many different ways, whether it’s reggae or reggaeton, salsa, polka–they have such a combination now, a fusion of jazz influenced music down there and some of the movies also reflect that. We have a movie called Brass Tacks about a fusion band from Atlanta that does kind of floetry jazz funk. I also think that it speaks to what’s happening now with this generation. I feel that they’re much more open to different sounds. The hip-hop generation is also open to jazz and poetry and Cuban music and Brazilian music and world music. Our world has opened up in that regard and I think that the festival shows that as well.
HW: Have you done a good sampling of the film festivals around the country and around the world yourself?
JG: I had done a couple of independent films and so of course in supporting those movies I had been to festivals, but more to the other side. In supporting one single movie I’ve gone to the festivals very single mindedly, and now I look back at my experience and try to see how I could’ve done better there, how it could’ve been better for me in those venues, what would I have liked more of. One thing that I felt about the festivals was this sort of compartmentalism that sort of happens at the bigger festivals. People have their parties and then you’re not invited or you are invited, whatever, and I tried to avoid that with our festival and have a more all-inclusive experience. So if you come to that festival you’re a part of that festival family and we all hang out together or not. You have your choice, but I still don’t want people to not be included, especially people from the island.
HW: Are you hoping to kind of dodge the whole freebie angle that’s pervaded Sundance and some of the other festivals where people come just to collect a new Blackberry?
JG: Yeah. It’s difficult because of where I’m doing the festival. I mean, the last three or four weeks I’ve just been hit on constantly for free trips to the festival and I said, ‘Well, first it’s a film festival. It’s not a trip to the Caribbean.’ The first thing that it is, is a festival and I don’t know any festival that brings in all of their filmmakers and friends. Usually the movies have to support themselves. To me we’re servicing the movie and we’re giving the movie a platform. We’re providing press for it. We’re giving it exposure. We’re giving it a voice and on top of that I can’t also pay for you, your mamma and your sister to come and hangout in the Caribbean. So that’s been a problem. That’s a problem that I did not anticipate and I don’t know why because Turks & Caicos is just so beautiful. But as I said the festivals that I’ve been to it was either on the dime of the movie or our dime. It was making an investment in promoting a film that we believed in. I don’t want to lose that focus just because we’re on a beautiful island.
HW: Can you talk about your discovery of the island and how it kind of strikes you?
JG: I had only heard of the island a few times, and the name wasn’t even locked into my brain and I kept going, “What? Say it again.” Some of that is because it has been an exclusive vacation spot. The people that have homes down on the islands usually, in the chain of islands there are about thirty and seven of them are inhabited, but people have been purchasing whole little islands. Donna Karen and Bruce Willis and Dick Clark–they have homes down there and they have them down there for a reason because it is very quiet and tranquil and the people there don’t bother you. And there is no poverty, so you’re not surrounded by impoverished people that need your help. You don’t get hit on while you’re on the beach. The beach belongs to everyone, which I also like. Sandals can’t come in and purchase a slab of beach in the middle of the seven-mile strip and then you can’t go through it. I like that they’re trying to hold on to the integrity of the water, the coral there because it’s a huge scuba diving destination. The island belongs to the people still. So for those reasons I was drawn to this island and I wanted to participate in the development of the island.
HW: What are some of the entries that, or maybe even the films that you went after that you’re particularly excited about?
JG: Well, I love Dance Cuba, which is about the National Ballet Company of Cuba, and part of why I love that movie is that politically it’s a socialistic government, but because of that it was an equal playing field for the dancers and it wasn’t just an art for the elite. I love just that theory behind it. If we could incorporate that into our culture–I think that arts should be open to all people as part of developing as a human being and not just for people who can afford ballet lessons or oboe lessons. Then there is a movie that I love called Refugee All Stars from Sierra Leone, which is about the refugees from the civil war in Sierra Leone that haven’t returned home in five years. They started their own band in the refugee camps. That was a very powerful movie. Another one of my favorites is The Last Days of Lisa Left Eye Lopez, which is her spiritual journey in Honduras documented by Lisa, not knowing, of course, that she was going to have a car accident and die within the next 26 days. So you’re actually watching her last days and her spiritual journey and what she was going through before she died and how she was almost signing off on things, which is really powerful to see. That is by the director Lauren Lazin who did the Tupac: Resurrection movie, which was nominated for an Oscar two years ago. I really support her ability to bring to life these young people that are no longer with us in body, but she makes us feel like they’re still alive.
HW: And when you wake up on the day after the festival closes how are you hoping that you will be feeling?
JG: I’m hoping that I will be elated, kind of like after I had my baby. I was drained, but I was elated after it. It’s like the day after a great opening night and then you know you go right back into it afterwards. You get a couple of days of that and then it’s time to go back to work because I really want to keep up the momentum of this festival for next year. Every time I fall short in some ways I go, “I have another year. I have another chance to do this. So let it go and work on it again.”
The Turks & Caicos International Film Festival runs October 17-21, 2006.
