Live Cargo Starring Lakeith Stanfield and Dree Hemingway Hits Theaters On March 31Posted by Wilson Morales
March 30, 2017
Hitting theaters in limited release on March 31 from FilmBuff is the independent drama film, ‘Live Cargo,’ starring Dree Hemingway and Lakeith Stanfield.
The film had its world premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, followed by appearances at the Warsaw Film Festival, the Sao Paulo International Film Festival and AFI FEST.
Written and directed by Logan Sandler, the film also stars Leonard Earl Howze, Sam Dillon, and Robert Wisdom.
Following a devastating loss, Nadine (Hemingway) and Lewis (Stanfield) retreat to a small Bahamian island where Nadine’s family has kept a house for many years. As they try to heal and move forward with their relationship, the community on the island shows signs of unraveling — with the island’s mayor, Roy (Wisdom), squaring off against Doughboy (Howze), a human trafficker who manipulates the impressionable homeless teenager Myron (Dillon) into assisting with his smuggling operation.
Based on writer-director Logan Sandler’s own experience growing up in and around the Bahamas, Live Cargo is a powerful meditation on love, loss and healing in a post-colonial world. Shot entirely in black and white, the film upends the “tropical paradise” archetype through its sharp, neorealist focus on the day-to-day of the island community. Live Cargo marks Sandler’s feature directorial debut and is co-written and produced by Thymaya Payne, director and producer of the award-winning documentary Stolen Seas.
In speaking with Blackfilm.com last year about the film, Stanfield talked about his character and working with Dree.
How would you best describe your character?
Keith Stanfield: Lewis is attempting to reinstate his relationship, which now is sort of on the brink of being compromised because of a still born child that an event that occurred back in the States so we go to the Bahamas to try and just get away and then do an environment switch and sort of come back to good terms with each other. Lewis is just a normal young guy trying to figure things out with his to-be-wife and just like most people I know, can’t swim.
This is a different departure from what people last saw you in. Obviously if they’re looking at independent films, Short Term 12 or Dope or if they’re looking at a big film they recognize you as Snoop Dogg. What was the attraction to doing this movie?
Keith Stanfield: The script. The script just really just blew me away. I was really intrigued by the many turns it took and how many elements were involved. The relationship is one element. There’s also an element of human trafficking and I found that interesting these two things were juxtaposed in this interesting place in the Bahamas and so the environment of the film and also Logan Sandler who I’d done a couple films with before, worked with before, who I love. An opportunity to work with him is already great, but the script just propelled me into it so it was like, “I’ve got to do this.”
You’re working opposite Dree and the audience has to recognize that there is a relationship and the good thing about this movie is it has nothing to do with race. It’s not like we’re looking at a black person and a white person because race has nothing to do with it. I guess when you read the script and you were working with Dree and Logan, was there any talks about how this relationship is established so that way color is not a factor?
Keith Stanfield: No. No and I think because Logan sort of understands the kind of person I am I think he knew that I wouldn’t be going into it with a sort of racial component, but that component is there whether or not we wanted to sort of portray it so it’s already there. It’s really up to the audience to interpret whether or not the racial issue makes a difference and that’s what we really wanted to do, put it back into the seat of the audience and say, “You know, well look at this. Does it matter if it was a black girl or a white dude or a black man and a white woman?” and hopefully by illustrating that love is there we just illustrated that has no color and that’s what we want to continue to push forward.
In the back of my mind I knew that would be something that would come up, but I never went into it with sort of any kind of bias. I kind of just left it all out. When we stepped up on that set, we were in love and that’s all we knew and we were trying to make it work.
How was shooting in the Bahamas?
Keith Stanfield: It was beautiful man. It was a crazy environment. A lot of the stuff that happened off set definitely influenced what happened on set. There were a lot of weird, interesting things. First of all, it’s a different world. You know they got like old flip phones and there’s some dudes called Bush Men who like jump out of the bushes and they live, they run around that place with no shoes on and that’s how they live so it was really tribal and made me feel like … It’s a tight knit community and so it made us feel like automatically going there stepping into a new life style and new territory so it was interesting to live there for the amount of time we were shooting. It was a trip.
How long did you stay there? How long was the shoot?
Keith Stanfield: A little over a month.
Had you visited the Bahamas before like Atlantis and all the popular tourist areas before that?
Keith Stanfield: No. I’d never been to the Bahamas until this film so my character going there, the freshness that he experienced was the same for me when I went there. It was like … and I damn sure wasn’t trying to jump off no boats into the water. Neither was my character. There was a lot of parallels in that.
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