Spotted! — Paula Madison
Film Producer, Finding Samuel Lowe
Former NBC Universal Executive Vice-President
Williams Group Holdings Co-Founder
My grandfather came here from China… and was a shopkeeper, as were many of the Chinese who came here. It was very moving to me that I could be afforded the opportunity to come to a place that was almost mythical to me as a child growing up in Harlem, where my parents often spoke about Jamaica, but I didn’t know Jamaica until I was 13 years old.
I felt very at home then; I feel very at home now. I have many relatives in Kingston, St Ann’s Bay, Mocho, Clarendon and Montego Bay. They are all over the island.
We (my family) own a television network called The Africa Channel. It’s kind of fun coming here and watching it on Flow. We were in the country and we had mic flags as we were shooting some content. We stopped for roast yam and salt fish, and the gentleman said, “Africa Channel. I watch Africa Channel all the time.” And then the prime minister is like ‘Big up to the Africa Channel. I should have known it was owned by Jamaicans.’ I was like ‘wow’. So, just very excited and welcomed and feeling at home.
On the importance of that income stream…
Well, you know, a lot creatives are always in search of capital. They’re in search of financing. To me, that makes sense but a better answer, personally, is that I have my own money to finance my own creative projects. I certainly wouldn’t mind having investors but I don’t need investors. There are actually people who do this. I want to encourage the creatives who are present. I have talked pretty consistently about having different income streams. You can work for someone and get a pay cheque. You can have a property and rent it out. You can work on weekends when you’re not working for someone else. The goal is to accumulate as much capital so that you have independent wealth. This allows you more options. Whether you’re a creative or not. That’s how we were raised to not have to be beholden to anyone… to chart your own course.
The Jamaican food…
The food is what I love most about coming home. I was at Hellshire beach yesterday with relatives enjoying lobster, crab, fish and festival, dripping with butter from the eating; loving the salt and sand. I love the smell of ackee and salt fish. I love being here. It’s a rhythm and a movement, and music and an overall beat that I know Jamaicans understand and those of us who are the children of Jamaicans can understand. And my brothers and I have just got our Jamaican citizenship so the next time you see me, I will say I am Jamaican.
On values instilled, growing up, being a child of Jamaican parents…
Being of Jamaican heritage, my parents — although they separated when I was a young girl — both emphasised the same things, which were ‘it’s all about family’ and the other one, ‘excellence’. We were expected to be excellent. We would not be allowed to be anything less than excellent. When I was eight years old I came home with my report card and I had always been at the top of the class and always had the best grades. I must have had a lapse or something but I remember I had a B in Geography and when I handed my mother my report card she was very stern and very unhappy and told me, “I did not come to this country for you to get a B.” That kind of set the tone for what I knew the expectations of me were. It was never tolerated that I would be the girl who chased after boys, or I’d be the girl who didn’t get into the best schools, or get the best grades. My job in exchange for my parents birthing me and taking care of me was to be the absolute best and so I strove to fulfil that expectation.
On her mum’s influence in making the film…
My mother died six years before we shot the film and I believe that she would be happy, but my mother, I think, programmed me to do this. In her telling the story to us, with some regularity, about not having had the experience which she had — which was growing up without a family and not knowing her father. We knew our father. I think my mother had every expectation that we would have the ability to close this gap for her. She never said it out loud. However, my mother had expectations of her children. My mother said you will be rich. It wasn’t just to be wealthy and be adorned with goods, that wasn’t it at all. It was to have the ability to not be restricted by whatever somebody else wanted or did. So the stories of my mum’s father in China; the stories of other family in Jamaica. We lived in New York but we knew that our family were citizens of the world, and we were expected to go see them at some point when we had the money to do so.
On wealth creation…
I do think that Jamaicans are among the most entrepreneurial people on the planet, but I think a lot do not see the link between being entrepreneurial and accumulating wealth. Although in Jamaica, we have susu here, and susu is something similar to what my brothers and I were taught as children, that you have to chip in and pool your money together, because if you do it together you will have an easier time accumulating capital and therefore acquiring assets. That’s really what the foundation of susu is. But now it’s a question of what sights are you setting beyond buying a home or starting a business. You can have that same group of people who are your people that you trust to the end and they trust you, and if you develop the common goals of not just having a business but what kind of business will we have, what will be the wealth proposition, that’s the next part of the discussion to have — how to build family wealth and intergenerational wealth that will go on for many generations.
On new developments at The Africa Channel…
The Africa Channel is shown here on Flow and we shoot most of our content ourselves, so the content is about 80 per cent owned by us. There is some primetime content that we syndicate through South African Broadcast Company and MNET. Other than that, there is a lot of content that we shoot in continental Africa. We have two production offices, one in Uganda and the other in Ghana and we are headquartered in North Hollywood, California. We acquire content and so we have people who are seeking product for syndication, we produce our own content, and we have been spending more time shooting in the Caribbean, and particularly in Jamaica, because the owners of the channel are Jamaican. There will be more opportunity for the channel as we are developing an app for your smart phone so you can watch the content wherever you are in the world.
We have people who are looking for content to propogate across the over-the-top platforms. We are trying to become more global and take the content to China which has a great relationship and interest in Jamaica and hopefully, if we can serve as a conduit, there can be a better understanding and approach between what we see happening with the development of business concerns in Jamaica by the Chinese.