With an expected final budget of about US$500,000, director Roy Anderson has teamed up with Dr Julius Garvey, son of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, to create a documentary film Garvey : A Son’s Story.

With an expected final budget of about US$500,000, director Roy Anderson has teamed up with Dr Julius Garvey, son of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, to create a documentary film Garvey : A Son’s Story.

The film is currently under production and filming on location in Jamaica. Anderson’s process involves capturing as much raw material as possible and less inclined to overly shape the lengthy Garvey narrative.

“Right now it’s a small team — me, my wife, and a few other loyal folks who work with us”, he told the

Jamaica Observer.

“In terms of writing the script, in documentaries you have two schools of thought. Some people do the scripts beforehand, but if you do that your story can be regimented. I don’t want to be pigeonholed, I like things to be organic, so for me the story really comes together in post.”

While Garvey does not recall exactly how he and Anderson came together, he notes it was Anderson’s film

Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess that inspired him to partner on the project.

“We were very simpatico right from the beginning. The fact that he did Nanny and the fact that it was such an honest reproduction and re-enactment of our warrior queen, I felt that he was somebody that could be entrusted with this,” said Garvey.

Garvey himself sees the film as a key catalyst in elevating the cultural sector locally.

“Why are Bob Marley and Usain Bolt the two Jamaicans that are elevated in terms of Jamaicans in the world? Nothing against them, but Marcus Garvey changed the world. Durham University published the 50 most important political figures of all time, from Aristotle, and Marcus Garvey is there, the only black man included. And we sit on that in Jamaica, and we don’t big that up.”

For his part, Anderson points out that the partnership will not compromise the final film.

“The funny thing is film-makers, because they like to take artistic liberties, generally don’t like to involve family members because they might hamstring the project or there might be a certain slant in favour of the family. But my style of storytelling is to be as objective as possible, the good the bad and the ugly; I’m not making a propaganda piece,” he told

Sunday Finance.

With the production value of Nanny at approximately US$250,000 and no reported profits to date, Anderson asserts that high revenues in terms of commercial success are not measures he uses at this stage to gauge the project’s success.

“We’re still trying. In terms of distribution we are going the independent route, but we are playing around the world on five continents, [and] at the festivals. These kinds of stories, at least with Nanny and Akwantu, they’re not commercial, so they probably won’t appear on the pages of Variety orHollywood Reporter — which for me, that’s fine, because my ultimate aim with these films is to enlighten, educate and inspire, not to get a mass of publicity. But with Garvey, this one is different,” says Anderson.

As this is only his third feature, Anderson acknowledges documentaries may not traditionally be as lucrative, but artistically this is where his focus remains. “Folks are hoping to get me out of documentaries soon as I can to start making some money! But I do love telling stories.”