Author, philanthropist and conservationist Brigitte Kassa is the subject of a new documentary which will premiere on Little Cayman – her home since the 1970s – on Saturday evening.
Kassa, at 85, is Little Cayman’s oldest resident.
The Lionfish University filmmakers behind the 35-minute ‘Paradise Found’ film on Kassa – James V. Hart, screenwriter of Hollywood movies such as ‘Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula’, ‘Contact’ and ‘Hook’, and Stacy Frank, who narrates the film – say they felt it was important to have a video document of this extraordinary woman.
“She is living history,” Hart told the Compass. “There were just 10 people living in Little Cayman when she and her husband Basil moved there.”
Life of adventure
Born in Berlin in 1939, Kassa spent her early life in war-torn Germany. At the age of 19, she left her home country and eventually ended up in Monte Carlo, running and owning the Gypsy Cafe nightclub in the 1960s, where the clientele included actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
She met her second husband, Basil Kassa, at her club and moved with him to his home in New Jersey. They travelled the world together, exploring potential tropical island homes so she could fulfil her dream.
She tells the filmmakers that she and Basil first arrived on Grand Cayman, before being told of Little Cayman. They boarded the DC3 plane that travelled between the two islands once a week at the time, and landed on Little Cayman’s grassy runway.
They were shown where they would be staying, at a home owned by the late Linton Tibbetts, in Blossom Village, and they went to the island’s single store to get some food. But the shelves were bare, apart from a few tins.
Next morning, they opened their front door to find that the locals had left them a gift of bananas and cassava to make sure they didn’t go hungry.
On a walk on the beach that day, they came across a ‘For Sale’ sign.
“We were sitting there [on a tree log] and looked at the water, and I touched the sand and said, ‘That’s it, this is my dream. I like to be here. I want to be here,'” Kassa tells Frank in the film.
And so, they worked to build her dream home on her dream island.
In her decades living on Little Cayman, Kassa has became a strong proponent of conserving the beauty and uniqueness of the island, and has donated large sums of money, as well as her time and energy, to the Little Cayman District Committee of the National Trust, which has enabled it to buy land to protect for perpetuity.
In the documentary, she tells the filmmakers that she would like to be remembered as “somebody who took care of the island, because I love the island”.
Making the film
‘Paradise Found’ was shot by documentary filmmaker Frans De Backer, directed by Hart and produced by Frank.
Hart and Frank, along with Frank’s brother, Cayman-based photographer Courtney Platt, set up Lionfish University to highlight the threat of lionfish on the marine environment. They are both regular visitors to Little Cayman, where the idea of Lionfish University was born.
Frank says they were inspired to create the film after she met Kassa on Little Cayman and read her book, and realised what an important part she had played in the history and preservation of the tiny, idyllic island.
The film was shot over six days in May 2022, and includes lots of photographs and footage of Kassa’s life, as well as of Little Cayman in the 1970s, when there was no electricity and just one flight a week.
“It was important from a historical and archival point of view to get her on film,” Hart said.
Both Hart and Frank say the determination of Kassa to realise her dream to live on an island in the sun, despite many challenges – including building a home on an island with no electricity or paved roads at the time – was inspirational.
“A lot of people never follow their dream,” Hart said, “they just dream, and she has a very different perspective on that.”
Frank added, “To me, the biggest message of the whole thing is if we can inspire anyone to live their dream, because of Brigitte’s film, then that is worthwhile.”
Lionfish University will hold the free premiere of the film at the Southern Cross Club at 7:30pm on Saturday, 27 Jan.
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Being Stacy Frank’s brother, I had the privilege of previewing the film as soon as it was finished and was extremely impressed by Ms Brigitte and the challenge of building and living in Little Cayman when she and Mr. Kassa made their commitment to live there. If you’ve read Herman Wouk’s “Don’t Stop The Carnival”, you have some idea of the cost, effort and isolation from goods and services it involved. As with all of the videos I’ve seen made by Frans DeBacker I was extremely impressed by his pro-bono work on this. To have the pro-bono involvement of Jim Hart, screen writer of the likes of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, “Contact”, “Hook”, “August Rush”, “Epic”, etc… was just over-the-top love and compassion for Ms Brigitte and the islands. It was Stacy who befriended Brigitte and brought all of this together, also on her own dime. Well done, all of you! Ms Brigitte’s story and this documentary are precious gems worth preserving among the treasure trove of the Cayman Islands’ historical gems!