SYNOPSIS (600 WORDS)

Mingling traditional Carnival craft with novel ideas, Peter Minshall goes chic to chic with upper crust art in this film.
 
Art has its share of uncredited heroes, and Mas Man assesses the heft of a Caribbean artist’s refreshing point of view of the perils of man’s incompleteness.
It is about a designer’s hubris to author a new word in art, “Mas ” (which overrides masquerade), to counteract the conformity and conservatism of Carnival in Trinidad in the 1970s. It’s about Peter Minshall reinventing Mas as a cutting edge tool to enlighten spectators about the complexities of life – a bold move that, in due course, influences the Olympic Games to feature him as an artistic director in Barcelona, Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

There are so many textures to Peter Minshall’s Carnival art, they all tie into a story line that essentially captures his muse, flair for costumery, as well as the enigma of a man whose main job seems to open confrontation between good and evil against the backdrop of the celebrations. His calling, as such, is to awaken themes about modern humanity that not only display a curious slant in art but also inform audiences that are privileged to discern his work.

The film examines Minshall’s life and art, a tapestry woven from multiple threads that include his “masography” coursing through 26 years; his design and stage acumen; his Olympic Games contribution; the Carnival stage (the Mas) in Trinidad preparing him for the world stage (the Olympics); and his set pieces of political protest and entertainment provoking parallel emotions in major North American, European and Asian cities.

Mas Man is geared toward a universal audience of all ages. There is no nudity. It addresses most of Minshall’s callous Kings and comely Queens in the Carnival; royalty at the head of the line, at the top of the serried racks of section leaders, sections and floor members; most of his mas bands comprising 2,500 or so revelers. Some of them, Minshall’s monarchs, such as Man Crab (the despoiler of the environment), behaving not quite as well as the audience expects. For, in his mirror they see their horror.
This stately group then dissolves into chapters that capture the breadth of his art, a representation of nearly three decades of his Mas “for the people.”

The documentary is shaped into an avant-garde time/space structure commensurate with how Minshall interviews; a herky-jerky style delivered in an ancestral British tongue mixed with Caribbean colloquialisms. Obviously, time-hopping precludes a linear progression, but we get to see how Minshall’s mind operates. Such mosaic style, though, allows the presentations to index themselves.

Key portrayals include his trilogy about good and evil, his dark essay on Milton’s “Paradise Lost”; “Papillon,” a story aflutter with multiplying butterflies but not about them at all; his dance of the macabre; the entwined threads of man and spirituality; monochromatic Mas (an entire band decked out in blood red, or pristine white); Mas as abstruse as “Santimanitay (without humanity or mercy)” and as pretentious as “Donkey Derby.”

Not intended as a hagiography, the film doesn't bother with narration. Local and foreign interviewees (artists, art critics, mas players, et al) aren’t shy with perspectives. They add texture to the legend. A personality so compelling, viewers should be able to figure the artist out by themselves. Even Hollywood points the way, explaining why producers cast him as director in three world-class performance art events. Because nobody, they say, can deal with human energy in large space the way he does. It’s why the Mas in Trinidad had served as template for his set pieces at those Olympic Games.