Photo Courtesy: http://bazodeethemovie.com/
Full & Original Article published at http://socanews.com/news/bazodee-is-how-machels-new-film-sends-dem/ on Tuesday 7 February 2017
Soca sensation Machel Montano has been a celebrity for many years, and now looks set to gain a slew of new fans with the release of Bazodee. The film, in which he makes his star debut alongside leading lady Natalie Perera, is a love story set in Trinidad and Tobago, with carnival and soca music as the backdrop. Bazodee was screened in the Caribbean, days ahead of Trinidad and Tobago’s annual film festival. A host of countries, including Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Curaçao, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, have now had the opportunity to see Montano on the big screen. In a Bollywood -style plotline, Montano plays soca singer Lee de Leon, who meets Perera’s character Anita Panchouri just as she’s preparing to marry a wealthy Londoner. The marriage could be the end of her family’s financial woes, but the attraction between Anita and Lee threatens all of that. Directed by Todd Kessler, Bazodee is a vibrant Caribbean-style, musical love story, and already seems poised to become a regional favourite.
The idea of branching into film is not a new one for Machel. He told us, “Let’s just say, filmmaking has been on my mind for a long time, and I definitely always dreamed of the day that I would transition from music to movies – or I always saw it as some sort of parallel avenue to express who we are and to get our stories out, and to put our culture out there.
“The idea for Bazodee, formerly called Scandalous, was actually brought to me 10 years ago by Claire Ince, the writer, and Ancil Mckain, the producer. The husband and wife team – Indepelago Films – really wanted to write the story because they were big fans of my music, and they wanted to write a love story based in Trinidad & Tobago, about our culture.”
Bazodee will get its first UK screening on Sunday 12 March followed up by a second screening on Monday 13 March at the Regent Street Cinema, as part of the 19th London Asian Film Festival, which runs from the 9th to 19th March.