Rastafarians in Toronto - Documentary Starting now on Omni

[Tropicana]

It's called Rastafari Then and Now.

Nation Cheong....I am about him but let me keep listening.



I wonder why they didn't use a Black guy....unless of it's his documentary.

[Tropicana]

He identifies himself as Afro-Caribbean....

[Tropicana]

3 Mansions:

- Nyabinghi
- Bob Shanit
12 tribes.


Nation has never been to Jamaica....he is visiting Jamaica as part of this documentary.

[Tropicana]

Okay here is the deal about Nation:

Nation Cheong: Born in Guyana, the artist formerly known as Troy Cheong re-invents himself in Canada with the soubriquet "Nation", and goes out looking through the third eye of his lens.
Community worker by profession, musician by vocation and artist by compulsion, Nation is interested in everybody and everything - curious to know, seeking to "overstand", eager to share.

At Winston Churchill Collegiate in Scarborough, Ontario, Nation learned to load and process black and white film and to make prints of his photos after being introduced to the mysteries of the dark room by John Arnold who also loaned him his first 35mm Olympus camera. He developed friendships with other budding photographers and began practicing black and white portraits of his friends and family.

Since then he has valued the camera as a tool to record the stories etched in people's faces, to document the moments that tell community stories, to freeze-frame the moments of abandon that free the body to stretch and fly. He looks for irony, contrast and contradiction that challenge our perceptions of what is true.

Photography is the medium for external manifestation, painting is the means of internal dialog and dancing with mood and feeling. The heartbeat of the drum metronomes the trigger finger to press the shutter at the correct hairs breath moment. That definitive moment that tells the story.

Thousands of words, distilled into images, enrich the archives, telling tales of community and culture, spirit and transcendence.

OK...let's see how this unfolds.

Anyone else watching....it is on Omni right now.

[Tropicana]

Okay his first stop is at Pinnacle. His friend from Toronto who is Jamaican and who introduced him to Rastafari is accompanying him.

[Tropicana]

Now he is at the Institute of Jamaica speaking with an anthropologist about violence in Jamaica as resistance.

[Tropicana]

He is about to reason with Mutabaruka.

[Tropicana]

He is speaking with Zara, the first Rastafarian who was selected as Miss Jamaica.

[Tropicana]

Now he is at Dunn's River.

[Tropicana]

Okay now he is speaking to Rastfarians in Trench Town. He is visiting the home where Bob Marley was living.

[jah_yout]

i don't have omni...tape it and sen to mi nuh

[Tropicana]

After you have been so mean to me.....

Is that flag you are waiving a surrender? Let me know and I will try to find it for you.

[Tropicana]

If you have the plug-in you can see a preview here:

http://www.vformation.tv/Rastafari_Then_and_Now.html

You can get the DVD here:

http://rastajourney.com/?p=1703

Still looking.

Oh I want to ask you something personal.

If I send you a PM, you promise you won't bite my head off.

[Tropicana]

By Brent HagermanFilmed in Toronto and Jamaica, this DVD is part history lesson and part personal journey, as Toronto youth worker and Nyabinghi drummer Nation Cheong seeks a deeper knowledge of Rastafari, putting his faith into action as he introduces a new generation to the tenets of the faith. Interviews with elders from the 12 Tribes, Bobo Ashanti and Nyabinghi traditions are presented alongside insight from noted scholar Barry Chevannes, Ethiopian Orthodox clergy and footage from Binghi ceremonies, both in Spanish Town, Jamaica and Toronto. But it is the personal touch given by Cheong's community work in Toronto that sets this doc apart from other expositions of Rastafari. This also is where the film remains largely unrealized. Promising to show how Rasta ideologies of peace and love (themselves subjective and problematic concepts that are taken at face value and never contextualized within the movement) can help change a culture of youth violence, the film fails to show how this can be achieved. Still, Rastafari is a solid and informative, if largely uncritical, primer in the beliefs and rituals of a religion whose public representation is often mired in stereotypes.

[j-kid]

I think I saw this Docu. on the tele di last time mi was dat side. If me memba correctly, in deh, him travelled dung tuh JA fi find him roots?