Magonolia, superhero for teens

Magonolia, a Caribbean teen superhero comic created by filmmaker Ancil Harris.
Magonolia, a Caribbean teen superhero comic created by filmmaker Ancil Harris.

Central City has the Flash. Gotham has Batman. Now, Trinidad has Magonolia a telekinetic teen superhero who is coming into her powers in the Caribbean.

Magonolia is the brainchild of filmmaker Ancil Harris from the GT Network. He has been drawing Magonolia since the 90s and now he gets to see his comic come to life with a live action short film.

"She's a teenage superhero with telekinesis powers – she can move things with her mind. She is trying to come to terms with her powers and dealing with her single family. Her mom passed and she lives with her dad, but the relationship with her dad is not the best. She discovered she had her powers in the universe we created. You know how Marvel has mutants and DC has metahumans? We have something like that. She is one of the few who discovered she has that. She is part of a superhero universe we are building. We have different characters, she is one of the characters who will be introduced in the universe."

Magonolia is a short film scheduled to be released on August 26. Set in Trinidad, it is part of a larger superhero series with other super-powered Caribbean people. For Harris, having super-powered Caribbean heroes was important for him so that the entire region could have fantastic characters to relate to.

"What we will do is rename streets or places, but have real places and generic places, like in the comics how they have Metropolis or Gotham, so it would be different. It is very important to be authentic. The superhero thing exploded in the States ten years ago and American people can relate to the heroes because it is set in America with American actors. I want to set a new view that is Caribbean. Not necessarily local, but a Caribbean aspect meaning that different Caribbean islands can relate to it."

Filmmaker Ancil Harris's goal is to create a Caribbean based superhero genre. PHOTO JEFF MAYERS

Harris is an experienced film practitioner working on productions like Santana. He is excited about this project because he sees so little fantasy and sci-fi film work in the Caribbean.

"I have been doing film for a while. I wanted something different. Most filmmakers do the same thing. It's either a drama, or romance. I said I want us to go into the fantasies. We don't have to do the folk stuff as a lot of people have done folk. Let's do something no one is doing. Let's do apocalyptic stuff. Let's give Trinidadians a show to make them know we can actually do this here. It may not be the same as Hollywood, but it could be in the same race."

Magonolia is a passion project for Harris and is funded out of pocket.

"Funding will come, but I cannot sit down and wait for that. If it takes five years to come, I could do a lot of stuff in five years. The thing is to get it done. To wait to sit down and film, I won't do that.

Who is Magonolia? Her real name is Rachel, a mild-mannered 19-year-old who experiences grief, anger and developing super human powers she is not yet sure how to control.

"Her motivation is she wants to do better because of the fact that she has never been that person she wanted to be when her mom was alive. She never got the opportunity to please her mom when she was alive. Her mom's death is like her driving force for her to push forward and be who she wants to be. That power could be unconstrained. If she does not control that power she could explode. That is the reason why she has to be careful and learn how to control, not use too much of her emotions," Harris said.

Aaliyah Ragoonath-Maharaj stars as teen superhero Magonolia in Ancil Harris live action short film. PHOTO BY KERWIN PIERRE

Magonolia or Rachel is played by Aaliyah Ragoonath-Maharaj, a 19-year-old aspiring model who is in between schools.

Ragoonath-Maharaj is a beautiful mixed-race girl with long curly hair, high cheekbones and striking features. She was at a model casting when Harris saw her. Since the 90s he has been drawing Magonolia. In 2016, he revised the character again, and Ragoonath-Maharaj fit the latest description.

"When I reinvented the character with the new look in 2016, I was looking for someone to look like the character.

"There were some people, yeah they were cool, but they just weren't meshing. It was only for the model casting I actually saw her and thought this girl was perfect.

"We had someone else in mind but the person was not looking like the character. I went up to her and asked her if she would mind acting in something we were working on."

Ragoonath-Maharaj is a former student of Lakshmi Girls' Hindu College, St Augustine. She just completed her unit two CAPE exams and is awaiting results. She is hoping to be a communications student at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine in September.

She loves dancing and learned how to Latin dance and do classical Indian dancing in school, a skill that may not be used in the movie but she intends to hone it for her attempts at pageants.

Aaliyah Ragoonath-Maharaj in character as Rachael who transforms into Magonolia in a scene from the live action short film by GT Network's Ancil Harris.
PHOTO COURTESY ANCIL HARRIS

Ragoonath-Maharaj sees kinship in her character. The two are the same age, they are both struggling with emotions they are yet to understand and they both lost a parent, an experience she draws on when trying to act as Rachel.

"Rachel, she is very quiet, very damaged, she has no body. When I try to portray that in the character, I try to remember how I felt when I lost a parent and where do I go from here in terms of that."

Ragoonath-Maharaj was eight when she lost her father Theron Haynes, she wasn't close to him, but that knowledge of losing a parent gave her motivation to act her role. But it wasn't easy as Rachel is an angry girl, and Ragoonath-Maharaj is always quite happy.

"At certain times it was hard, there was this scene where I just needed to be really angry and I just couldn't. I did not know how to get that out of me, so we had to shoot that scene a million times. I guess with me I need to work on getting different emotions out and knowing how to portray different emotions at different times. Now that we started this, I'm looking to do a class or something just so it could become more natural to me so we don't have to shoot a scene a million times," she said.

She too sees how her character can be quite relatable to the every day teen in TT.

"In terms of her being so damaged and so lost, a lot of young Trinidadians can relate, and by them watching the show, I believe they could get some sort of motivation. They could say: 'Hey, if she is there to deal with it, I can too.' She is relatable to teenagers and the fact that she's mixed race, not exclusive to one type of people, anybody and all races could relate to her. It sends out a good message," she said.

Magonolia is the first in a series of shows involving different superheroes. This short film will have Easter eggs that reveal other characters in Harris' superhero universe.

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