The documentary on the life and work of Norman Manley being purchased at the launch at the Palace Cineplex, Sovereign Centre, St Andrew recently. - IAN ALLEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
WESTERN BUREAU:
ONE DAY before what would have been his 112th birthday and 35 years after his death, National Hero Norman Washington Manley got a new lease on life.
In fact, he was larger than life in the documentary on his life that was seen publicly for the first time - the premiere of the Premier, if you will - on big screen at the Palace Cineplex, Sovereign Centre, Liguanea, St. Andrew.
Chairman of the brief function, Ainsley Henriques, marked it as a historic moment, as "it is the first full-length movie about a Jamaican patriot, a Jamaican hero." It was not an inexpensive venture either, as the documentary, entitled Norman Washington Manley: Son of Jamaica, Father of the Nation, took six years and six million dollars to complete.
Coincidentally the documentary, produced and directed by Cynthia Wilmot and Hilary Nicholson, is in six parts, entitled The Country Boy, The Soldier, The Barrister, Leader of the Party, The Visionary and The Legacy. A 25-minute extract, covering significant events such as the founding of the trade union movement and the referendum on West Indian Federation in the process of relating Norman Manley's life, showed a mixture of dramatisation, interviews, old photographs and film.
The filmmakers, however, had some amount of undying memory to draw upon, as Cynthia Wilmot related. "When I came to Jamaica in 1951 the first person I met was Edna Manley, who invited me to Drumblair (Manley home). When I got there Norman Manley, a person who I thought of in awe, gave me my first Bombay mango. I never forgot that," she said, smiling.
She said that Norman Manley was not as flamboyant as his cousin Alexander, or his son Michael, but while his amazing mind was well known, "what we did not know was that he had been considered a bad boy at school. We found a man who wrote passionate love letters to Edna. He was a lawyer who had died without leaving a will."
Hilary Nicholson pointed out the difficulties of "doing a visual production of a man who died a long time ago, leaving very little visual reference behind. He was not fond of the camera, still or film. And the camera found him closer to the end of his life, when he became worthy of being followed around as a Premier."
"Norman Washington Manley: Son of Jamaica, Father of the Nation is two and a half hours long.
M.C.
