Trinidadian-Canadian filmmaker Richard Fung talks to Jonathan Ali about his documentary The Enigma of Harold Sonny Ladoo
WRITER Harold Sonny Ladoo – born and raised in Trinidad, later residing in Canada – had the shortest career and life. There is no pain like this body (1973), his first novel – which evokes in high poetry the strained Indo-Trinidadian life at the beginning of the 20th century – marked the arrival of a talented writer. Tragically, Ladoo was killed at the age of 28 in a cane field in central Trinidad. A second and final novel, the absurdist comedy YESTERDAY (1974), was released posthumously and recently reprinted.
In his new documentary, the Trinidadian-Canadian filmmaker Richard Fung tries to come to terms with Ladoo’s life and death. Drawing on a decades-long archive of never-before-seen interviews shot by the Trinidadian documentary Christopher Laird with family, acquaintances and colleagues, The Enigma of Harold Sonny Ladoo represents a change of form suck it up of a man. Richard Fung spoke to Jonathan Ali to deal with it.
What is it about Harold Sonny Ladoo that makes him worth engaging with today?
I came across Ladoo’s books in the 1970’s or 80’s and found them not only fascinating but incredibly exciting as novels set in a fictionalized version of Trinidad by an author in Canada. By the time I came to work on the documentary, I still remembered the physical discomfort caused by There is no pain like this body – that endless rain that saturates everything – and the defiant strangeness of the villagers within YESTERDAY.
But I knew nothing about the man. I learned all about him from Christopher Laird’s video interviews. What I discovered is that Ladoo’s life and death are as remarkable as his fiction. He was a brilliant writer but a flawed man, and I tried to convey that without being greedy or compromising the people Christopher interviewed.
How challenging was that?
The difficulty with the assessment of the Ladoo writer against the Ladoo man is that his description of Pa’s violence against Maa and the children in There is no pain like this body it is usually read as a critique of patriarchy. What does it mean that in Pa Ladoo he was describing himself? My approach to film is to give as much narrative as I can and let the viewer decide.
Christopher Laird tried to film There is no pain like this body. You beautifully invoke the movie that never was, through animated renditions of excerpts from the novel and readings from various writers.
Christopher’s failure to complete his feature film No Pain it was due to a lack of funding for the live-action drama. This wasn’t a problem for me as I’m not a big fan of drama in documentaries. I prefer to provide the viewer with the skeleton of an image upon which they can create the scene in their imagination.
The authors featured in the documentary – David Chariandy, Ramabai Espinet, Andil Gosine, Kevin Jared Hosein and Shani Mootoo – all have roots in Indian indenture and all have some connection to Ladoo and/or the project. Adam Williams, who did the cartoons, is primarily a ceramic artist and I have long admired the drawings on his pieces. I wanted someone familiar with the landscapes and people of central Trinidad, and Adam has a very Trinidadian mischief and wit.
Enigma fits into your long and varied oeuvre as an exploration of an intertwined life, someone we might characterize as on the margins of history. What keeps drawing you to these stories?
I was a child when television came to Trinidad & Tobago; most programs were American or British. Seeing supposedly West Indian Chinese characters played by black American or British actors with strange accents made me aware that these performances were around we but no ABOUT we. So when I started doing my work in Canada, I wanted to not only represent marginalized perspectives, but also speak to minority viewers.
The challenge of working with marginalized subject matter is its marginality. I have come to terms with the fact that although some of my videos have been shown in large international venues, I work for a limited audience. After art school, my first job was in community cable television. I remember my station manager saying that if a program was meaningful to just five viewers and it reached those five viewers, it was a success.
The Enigma of Harold Sonny Ladoo (2024)
Director: Richard Fung
Canada, Trinidad & Tobago • 84 minutes
