CONCERT IN THE RAINFOREST

category: documentaries, guyana, short films

CONCERT IN THE RAINFOREST

In the year 2000, a grand piano found its way to the Wai Wai village of Masakenari in the South Rupununi, and remained there, more or less a white elephant, until Guyanese writer/culturalist, Dr Michael Gilkes, and renowned pianist Ray Luck arrived to teach the residents how to play and maintain the instrument.

The grand piano had been flown from England via BWIA to Georgetown, then conveyed by air to Gunn’s Strip where it was off-loaded and rowed in a canoe upriver. Subsequently it was dragged through undergrowth to the Wai Wai’s first village at Konashen, from where it continued on its journey to Masakenari. It is now in the benab there which houses the village church.
The story of how the piano arrived in the village and how it has been put to use is to be featured as part of an hour-long documentary entitled ‘Music of Eldorado.’ The piano segment of the documentary which lasts 25 minutes is called `Concert in the Rainforest.’

Other components of the film record the varied music of the city and the coastal areas, representing an attempt to explore coastal attitudes to the hinterland.

directed by MICHAEL GILKES
Michael Gilkes, is a distinguished Caribbean critic, dramatist and former lecturer at several Universities, and more recently a filmmaker. His critical work includes ‘Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel (1975)’; ‘The Literate Imagination (1989)’, which is also about Harris; and ‘The West Indian Novel, Twayne’. His play, ‘Couvade’, was published by Cape in 1974, while ‘A Pleasant Career’, a play about the life and work of Edgar Mittelholzer, won the prestigious Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992. ‘Joanstown’ won the 2002 Guyana Prize for best book of poetry. He won the 2006 Guyana Prize for drama with his play, ‘The Last of the Redmen’.

GUYANA || 2002 || 25 MINS