FOR the past four years, Donisha Prendergast has been travelling the globe screening her maiden film RasTa: A Soul’s Journey.

On Monday night, the project was screened in Jamaica for the first

time, in the company of a small group of family, friends and well-wishers.

On what was also largely a journey of self-discovery, Prendergast set out to discover the global manifestation of Rastafari — the movement and way of life which has its origins here in Jamaica following the coronation of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1930.

The daughter of Sharon Marley and former FIFA referee Peter Prendergast, she travelled through Ethiopia, England, Israel, South Africa, Canada, the United States, India and Jamaica to gather the perspectives on Rastafari by persons in those societies for her first feature length effort.

What unforlds on screen is an intensely personal journey, filmed in the form of a video diary, in eight countries starting in 2008.

Prendergast explained that she waited this long to screen in Jamaica as it was all about the timing.

“The perfect time to screen here just never presented itself. Each time I thought about it, something came up. I was set to do it last year, but I became active in the Occupy Pinnacle movement, so I put it off and the time became right,” she explained.

“The biggest life lesson learned from this journey is that I’m still learning. Everyday is a new lesson, there’s always something to learn. But I really had a chance to observe me and my own evolution over the course of this journey,” Prendergast added.

Along her journey, she gathered the perspectives of persons including her grandmother Rita Marley, the late Professor Barry Chevannes, fellow film-maker Barbara Blake Hannah as well as Rastafari brothers and sisters in the various territories.

Speaking on Monday night, family friend Minnie Phillips expressed delight in the final product, noting that it was a fitting way to share the Rasta story.

“I am very proud of what you have done; as a forerunner, I see this as a passing of the baton for especially women in Rasta,” she told Prendergast and the small audience inside the theatre at the Bob Marley Museum in St Andrew.

— Richard Johnson