Wah Do Dem, means “what they do” in the Kingston, Jamrock vernacular. Its the name of a new feature from young Brooklyn filmmakers Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner who decided to pack up a Panasonic HVX200 and some great actors when Ben won a raffle to take a luxury cruise over the beautiful island of Jamaica. The film, shot and imagined on a slim DIY budget, features a handful of musical Brooklynites including Ira Tuton from Yeasayer, Ben Goldwasser from MGMT and most epicly, Norah Jones in her first film appearance since her wild role in Wong Kar-Wai’s “My Blueberry Nights“. The film attempts to capture the unique and vivid Jamaican culture through the eyes of an out of place and out of mind young American faced with a crossroads in his life after Jones’ character dumps him. But it brings much more to the table.
During his journeys (as standard by anyone crossing from Montego Bay to Kingston…) irie Max comes upon the island’s early roots reggae legends The Congos adding a unique cultural bridge between the two dynamically different yet musically bonded characters. As director Flesher states,
“The nyabinghi drumming sessions – like the scene we portrayed in our movie – are not about authorship or who is steering the rhythm one way or another. Its more like a group attempt to tap into a timeless cultural thing or a feeling that is deeper than any one drummer…I feel a similar dynamic exists with filmmaking, and especially the kind of filmmaking we undertook with Wah Do Dem. Sam and I had ideas about where the story would go and how it would get there, but the real feel and energy of the movie came out of the people and places with whom we worked and as the directors of the film we were less the ‘auteurs’ in the classical sense, and more like the bass drummer and the falsetto singer at the binghi session, keeping the pulse moving and steering the swell and fall of music to a certain extent, but only as much as two pieces can in a group of many parts”
Their journey just won the Los Angeles Film Festival narrative award this summer, an amazing feat for any low budget digital film so look for a possible small release soon! For further studies check their site.