The Coronado Island Film Festival celebrated 10 years of bringing the best films to the San Diego area from November 5th to 9th. In addition to the films, festival attendees also attended panel discussions with industry experts and a special presentation of the documentary “Tug of War,” which featured an intimate conversation between Beatles experts Tom Frangione and Paul McCartney.
Actor Beau Bridges was honored at the opening night gala on November 5th. Austin Kolodny, screenwriter of “Dead Man’s Wire.” Stunt pro Heidi Moneymaker. costume designer Deborah L. Scott; music editor Adam Smalley; and actor Delroy Lindo.
Before the gala, Lind spoke with us about hurricane relief in Jamaica, his directorial debut, and his role as Delta Slim in the blockbuster hit “Sinners.”
Relieving Jamaica is a cause close to his heart. He was born in England to Jamaican parents and feels a strong connection to the island.
“People need to realize that Jamaica’s infrastructure leaves much to be desired at the best of times, so it’s even more devastating for an island like Jamaica to suffer this type of tragedy,” Lind said. “And what I would like to ask of you is Hurricane No matter how people are responding to Melissa’s tragedy, I want them to do everything they can to find out which organizations can help. I just ask you to please donate what you can because obviously there is a huge need. If Melissa hadn’t happened, there would have been a huge need in Jamaica. That’s the nature of the economy, so please do what you can because this tragedy in Jamaica is making everything worse. ”
One of the ways Lind is giving back to the island is that he plans to film his directorial debut, The Jabari People, on the island.
“I have family there and I’m actually going to shoot, direct, co-produce and star in films there. As a person of Jamaican descent, I’m always looking for ways to contribute meaningfully to this island. And for me, making films in Jamaica is a way to contribute and put people to work. So Jamaica is never far from my thoughts and how I can help and contribute.”
Lind directed in theaters, but it took a little longer to make it to the screen. “When I started directing films, I wanted to create stories that touched my heart,” he says. “That’s what this story was about. And there’s another piece of property that I have rights to. So the only thing that took me so long was just finding that material.”
“The Jabari People” is about a young man who loses his mother, a doctor, and is kicked out of an elite school as a teenager. His father, a doctor, sends him to live with his maternal grandparents in Jamaica, and he is “adopted into this particular community in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. As he begins to heal, he is able to begin the healing process with his father. That’s kind of the CliffsNotes version of this story. There’s an aspect of magical realism to this story. Anyone who has visited Jamaica and been to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica knows that it’s a very magical place,” Lind says.
He’s trying to block funding, but that’s always difficult. “It’s challenging, very challenging, but we’re still making progress,” he says.
Lind’s portrayal of Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners truly demonstrated his range. The film is “a mosaic of elements,” he says. Audiences “go back to see the movie three or four times, and each time they find different things in the story to respond to that resonate with them. And that comes back to Ryan’s talent…I realized that Ryan was trying to use this genre to tell a much bigger, more poignant, more complex story. And that’s why I call it a kind of mosaic.”
Lind said of Delta Slim, “I’m working on this piece to try to find out who this guy is. Because of Delta Slim’s history, because of his virtuosity, and because he lived, I have a history because I’ve lived the years I’ve lived. All of that connects to the larger story that Ryan wants to tell in terms of where and how blues music fits in American culture.”
Although he’s busy with his own projects, he cites director/screenwriter Lungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl as a recent favorite. “I’m inspired. I saw a movie like that and said it wasn’t easy for her to make that movie. And the challenges that I face in making my movies inspire me to keep moving, to keep moving forward, to keep trying, because… there are so many stories that aren’t being told. And I was talking to some film students and they talked about how even though the landscape of film is changing, and a little bit about American film. I’m not saying that the American film world is small, but this is what I’m saying: There are so many other stories that could and should contribute to the American film world. Part of my appreciation for ‘On Being a Guinea Fowl’ is that it sounds so cliché, but you have to never lose sight of what you believe in, especially when you’re constantly facing rejection.
