By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
IT WAS movies without popcorn, nachos and soda on Tuesday night, as a quartet of short films about Jamaica was screened at the Livity Restaurant on Old Hope Road in St. Andrew.
The group present, which included intellectuals, poets and Rastafarians, was treated to documentaries on Rastafarianism, repatriation, the Maroons and an uncut treatment of Mutabaruka in Africa, as seen through the lens of Dr. Werner Zips. The professor in the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna in Austria was the man behind the camera, but it was the people he was documenting who did the talking, resulting in a feeling of authenticity.
In fact, after the third film, The Maroons of Accompong: Black Freedom Fighters of Jamaica, the head of the Social Sciences faculty of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, Barry Chevannes, said: "I want to thank Verner for these films and congratulate him. It is not easy to get the co-operation needed to get these films out. It shows you were able to achieve a high level of trust. It showed an intensity of involvement. I would like to say thanks for this mirror in which we can see ourselves."
MUSIC
The films were saturated with music, from a poignant cut of Junior Reid singing Listen To The Voices in the first, to Morgan Heritage and Bounty Killer doing Guns In The Ghetto in Africa Here I Come, Burning Spear chanting of The Days of Slavery in The Maroons of Accompong and, of course, well-known Mutabaruka pieces in the last and longest documentary.
The first two films ran one after the other seamlessly, with an explanation of the Nyabinghi as death to black and white oppressors was followed by a comment by a Rastafarian that "I glad I born here (Jamaica), this is a special place" to end the film.
However, 'here' is not so special that the Rastafarians do not still want to go 'there'. As one man in the documentary outlined, if so much money can be spent to move war machinery, repatriation should be a simple matter.
Africa, Here I Come saw the fulfilment of the repatriation vision, starting with a view of Trench Town and an explanation of the division of the community into 'Jungle' and 'Rema'. Switching from the inner-city to the Rastafarian temple, over a plaintive rendition of a Rastaman Chant, a Rastaman declares: "We who have come to respect our African roots are saying take us home."
PERFORMANCE
That is what the camera does, as a brief scene of Mutabaruka in performance in Africa ('this is very strange to me personally, this is a place that we write about, this is sacred ground') sets the scene for an exploration of Rastafarians living in Africa. We see then cultivating, constructing, getting water from a well and, of course, drumming and chanting.
"This is our 'livity' in Africa here. As I said before, we are happy," one Rastaman said.
Africa Here I Come ends with Buju Banton's Til Shiloh, and a scene of Rastafarians outside a temple on the hill, overlooking lush vegetation.
Before The Maroons of Accompong was shown, Professor Zips explained why he chose to focus on them. "I was fascinated by the Maroons, because they were the ones who put up resistance to the British I know there are films on Maroons and they are shown as traitors," he said, going on to suggest that this view resulted from the normal divide and rule tactics of the British.
"The picture that we have on Maroons now is a bit distorted," he said.
His attempt to clarify the situation turned out to be a physical and historical journey, from the sun, sand and sea tourist poster image of Jamaica into the hills, as well as from slavery through the Maroon wars to the peace treaty of 1739, jumping forward to 1992.
MOVEMENT
Professor Zips linked the Rastafarian movement with the Maroons, in the sense that both groups retreated to the hills. This linkage is not only made in the narration but also in the film, since there is a particularly striking shot of a Maroon celebration procession framed over the shoulder of an elderly Rastafarian.
Another striking moment comes with Harry Belafonte singing the idyllic Island In The Sun against the full screen picture of a very serious-looking Rastafarian.
The film shows the Maroons in daily life, including in the schoolroom, as well as preserving their traditions and history, especially oral. Although, as the early narration says, 'the African religion was the resistance to the total domination of the whites' there is still a great deal of intermingling, since at a funeral we see Maroons singing hymns like When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.
The mingling of Maroons and other Jamaicans, at the official and celebratory levels, is also shown with a visit to the celebration of the peace treaty signing and the January 6 Accompong 'open day'. Although it is emphasised throughout that the Maroons live in a state within a state, during the January celebrations the school is turned into a disco and 'young people press for admission to listen to Ninja Man, Shabba and Supercat...'
LINKAGE
However, the film ends with a linkage to the past, when Gladys Foster is seen calling on Cudjoe to come have a drink with her.
Mutabaruka was on hand to introduce the rough version of Mutabaruka in Africa, which was started in 1997 and chronicled his visit to Ghana and performance in some dungeons. An interview filmed in St. Elizabeth a few days before was not included in the version screened at Livity on Tuesday night.
"Is me just walking and reasoning and talking about de experience in Ghana," Mutabaruka said. "I had the experience of sitting in the female dungeon for about two hours. I came out feeling that it was the end of that kind of poetry. I don't need to write any more of that kind of poem, to me that was the fulfilment of writing that kind of poetry," Mutabaruka, who subsequently released the album Life Squared, said.
