To the Land of Many Waters is a short documentary-style film, filmed on location in the areas of Leonora, Berbice and Essequibo, Guyana, South America. Guyana is the country wherein half of my family derive from, and up until August 2016, I had never visited. Guyana is an incredibly diverse, rich and unusual country. Despite being in South America, it bares very limited cultural relevance to the typically South American, Latin American culture. Instead, it is the continent’s only country that speaks English, 44% of its population are of East Indian descent, and it is part of the Caribbean. I decided to further explore the unique nature of what it means to be Guyanese – a rich part of my identity that I know very little about.
I created this short film piece, To the Land of Many Waters, as a response to my experiences, and how I was able to most comfortably navigate my time spent there. The Land of Many Waters is the Amerindian name for Guyana, and is a reference to the Demerara river, the origin of the sugar with the same name. The focus of my short film follows Garimah, an 8-year-old girl whose familial ties to myself were rather dubious – later I was able to infer she is the granddaughter of my mother’s cousin. I found the curiosity and inquisitive nature of Garimah’s personality to be incredibly interesting; especially once it was revealed that I was one of the first light skinned people she had ever met in real life.
I used subtitles within the film piece, as a way to further explore storytelling, through a somewhat meta-narrative. I took fragments of dialogue heard during my time spent in the country, and allowed them to narrate seemingly irrelevant footage, to create a richer and more inquisitive short film.