My name is Jonathan Ali and I watch movies for a living. Really. My job helping programme the T&T Film Festival requires me to watch hundreds of movies every year.
I was born in a nursing home in Cascade where the Coblentz Inn now stands. The view from my hammock, way up in the St Ann’s hills, has remained, blessedly, the same: a lushly-forested mountain, with the river I used to bathe in as a boy still running cold and clear at its base.
Trips to visit my father’s parents in Lengua Village [were like] entering another world. My grandfather, a cane farmer, had a bullock cart. He would play the harmonium. My grandmother spoke Hindustani with her friends. As a little boy, this was fascinating. The older I got, however, alcoholism, domestic violence and poverty became more evident.
My father resides in Grenada, my younger sister, in the US. I am the only [one] still in Trinidad. My mother died of cancer in 2000. In January, I underwent surgery to remove my cancerous thyroid gland.
I come from one of Tolstoy’s uniquely unhappy families. So having children was not for me, lest I replicate that unhappiness. Last September, I entered a committed relationship with the most wonderful woman. But children still aren’t on the agenda.
I feel we’d be a better-integrated society if more of us had the experience of sitting between two strangers in the back seat of a route taxi.
I visit the US less often and with less enthusiasm since I started getting profiled at JFK. My name is Ali, I have a beard and I’ve visited eastern Africa—well, wouldn’t you profile me?
After the child abuse that was Common Entrance, (I was) placed in Fatima College, a microcosm of the society. The white boys—French Creoles and Syrians—favoured the wealthy mixed-race boys. [But] you had to live in places like Fairways or Haleland Park.
As much as I loved calypso, soul and roots reggae, the music that sonically and lyrically matched how I felt in my teenaged years of soul-crushing anguish was rock. When I first heard the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” — eight minutes of squalling guitar feedback, seesawing electric viola, primal drums and Lou Reed snarling “I’m gonna try to nullify my life”—it was an epiphany.
God might exist —I have no proof otherwise—but I don’t believe in Him. I’m with the Mighty Shadow: I believe in the world and its problems.
I haven’t read much fiction lately. So I have to thank the two main political parties’ respective manifestos for reintroducing me to the genre.
A great film is a great film—thriller, horror or western. (But) superhero movies are made for and should only be watched by 14-year-old sexually frustrated boys.
Cinema was conceived as a communal experience, with a film projected from behind an audience onto a large screen, watched in one continuous sitting. There remains no better way to enjoy movies. Cheaper, perhaps, more convenient, possibly; but never better.
The day I found out I had cancer, I called my girlfriend in London then went to see Chris Rock’s Top Five. Worrying makes no difference. I’m grateful my treatments have been successful. Life goes on.
Since the TTFF’s 2006 inception, I’ve helped find and select festival films, write about them for the guide, and present them to audiences. The best part is discovering a great film [and] having audiences love it. The worst part is there’s always at least one film you couldn’t get or programme.
I have no problem with TT filmmakers making any kind of film. (But) is it a good film? Too often the answer, sadly, is, “No”.
Films are a reflection of the society, and [our] society is poorly developed, dysfunctional even. There’s a class and possibly race element at work too, but to talk about that would really get me in trouble.
In form six, a fellow student called me a coolie. I struck him and we began to fight. The thing about it was that the boy was black. For years, I’d endured racist taunts from white bullies at school and done nothing; but, when a black boy did it, I didn’t hesitate to strike out. That still saddens me.
A Trini is the most adaptable person on earth.
Trinidad (not Tobago) is the one place where I never feel as though I have to justify my presence.
Read a longer version of this feature at www.BCRaw.com