Seeking a New York Audience for a Film Rooted in Trinidad

August 23, 2012, 10:21 am

By VIJAI SINGH

Ian Harnarine was studying physics at the University of Illinois in Chicago and preparing himself for a life in academia when he realized that he had lost his passion for science.

“I studied physics in university and through grad school, but then there was always this idea of storytelling,” Mr. Harnarine said. So in 2005, he moved to New York to attend film school at New York University.

“It was important to me if I ever had the opportunity to show my culture or show my people or show people that look like me, to me that's important because no one else is going to do it, right?” Mr. Harnarine, 33, said. “Even though that really wasn't the main goal, the main g oal for me was to tell an earnest story that hopefully people will relate to some way, but something that meant something to me.”

Six years later, Mr. Harnarine completed his thesis, a 16-minute film called “Doubles With Slight Pepper'' that tells the tale of a bittersweet reconciliation between a father who returns to his native Trinidad from Canada and the son he finds there selling doubles, a kind of sandwich that is the island's native street food.

“It's like how hot dogs are in New York,” explained Mr. Harnarine, who was born and raised in Toronto and whose parents are from Trinidad. Doubles are made from two fried flatbreads, which are called “baras'' and are filled with curried chickpeas and garnished with tamarind and hot sauce.

The film, which is available on iTunes, will be screened on Friday at the Consulate General of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in New York as part of its annual “Trinidad and Tobago Diaspora Film Screenings, ” which this year is also part of a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the country's independence from England.

The inspiration for the film came from Mr. Harnarine's father. “A couple of years ago my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease,” Mr. Harnarine said. “I didn't know this man anymore, this person that literally raised me for my entire life, and so that idea of what it would be like to meet your father for the first time towards the end of his life, I thought was an interesting idea and so I sort of took that and, you know, I ran with that idea.“

In the film, the son, Dhani, struggles to make sense of his father's return, feeling that his father had forgotten about his family when he left in search of a better life in Canada. Now that his father is back, Dhani is torn over mending the fractured relationship with a man he doesn't really know.

“Doubles With Slight Pepper” has generated much buzz in the film world, winni ng Canada's equivalent of an Academy Award, the 2012 Genie Award for best live-action short drama from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, along with the 2011 Best Canadian Short Film award.

It was screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May and in Paris in June as part of a program hosted by the Cesar Academy. It has been shown in Spain, and Filmmaker Magazine recently named Mr. Harnarine as one of the “25 new faces of independent film.” Spike Lee is an executive producer of the film.

Yet for all the accolades the film has received, Mr. Harnarine has had a difficult time finding a receptive audience in New York, landing screenings in relatively modest venues and minor festivals and failing to stoke any significant interest among the city's large Indo-Caribbean community.

“It being a short film is already pretty difficult because you know it's not going to play at the multiplex,'' Mr. Harnarine said. “But I was expectin g a bit more support from the community.''

Short features tend to have a hard time drawing a popular audience, Mr. Harnarine noted, and many immigrants from Trinidad and other West Indian countries favor Bollywood productions with English subtitles.

Indo-Caribbean Alliance, a nonprofit group in Queens, said it planned on screening Mr. Harnarine's film at the Lefferts branch of the Queens Borough Public Library.

To raise money for the film, Mr. Harnarine started a campaign on Kickstarter, a Web site through which people can donate money to projects. He also went to Indo-Caribbean stores in Queens.

“We literally went from the end of the A train in the hub of the West Indian-Guyanese community there and we just put up posters, went into every single store,'' he said. “And mostly we were met with indifference and people that didn't really get it, like some people thought that the title of the film, they didn't believe that we were making a film, we were trying to steal his customers and strange things like that.”

In the end, Mr. Harnarine invested about $4,000 of his own money to make the film, which cost around $17,000.

Mr. Harnarine hopes to adapt “Doubles With Slight Pepper” into a feature-length film, but for now, he says his main goal is to promote the film.

“I think my generation, the first generation or the children of immigrants whether like in North America or of the diaspora, I think a lot of them are like me and they're like, ‘Oh, well how come there's no movies or TV shows with people like us in them?''' he said. “So I think there is a need.”