Film Screenings at the EBCCI Cinemateque

3:00pm   Rues Cases Negres/Sugar Cane Alley, Euzhan Palcy (105 mins)

On the Caribbean island of Martinique, a young boy named Jose listens to stories of Africa told by an old sugar cane worker. After the old man dies, the boy writes the stories in his own words and submits them as a school essay.  His telling is so eloquent that the school master accuses him of plagiarising them from a book.


5:00pm  The Harder they Come, Perry Henzell (100 mins)

Ivanhoe Martin comes to the city to make it big singing Reggae.  However, he finds life in the city to be harder than he thought, and is taken advantage of by both the record producer and the marijuana boss he later starts dealing for.  When he kills a police officer, events start escalating that make him Jamaica's most wanted man and a momentary hero to all the oppressed Jamaicans. 


7:00pm   Guttaperc, Andrew Millington (85 mins)

Set on a small Caribbean island, this is the story of 10 year-old Eric's holiday with his grandparents.  The village is in turmoil since the Government revealed its plans to build a tourist resort on the villager's land.  Eric is caught in the middle of this turmoil through his friendship with Sister Pam, a wise village woman and a critic of the proposed development.  She tells Eric stories about the village's real and mythical history.  Through these stories, Eric connects with the village and soon comes to the uncomfortable realisation that his grandfather will be a major beneficiary of the project that threatens to displace the villagers.  


8:30pm   L'homme Sur Le Quais/Man on the Shore, Raoul Peck (105 mins)

In the 60's, life in Haiti was not an easy thing unless you belonged to the ruling class or the dictator's family or friends of the family.  Papa Doc's reign was very brutal and any deviation from the rule was punishable by death or torture.  A young girl is exposed to the brutality of the Tonton Macoute (the private secret police and militia that Papa Doc used to terrorize Haitians for 29 years.  She does not understand all the ramifications of what she sees, but through her Aunt's agony and fears and ultimately arrest, she knows that life around her is not good and there is a lot of sadness and sorrow too.  The pace of the movie also convey very well the fact that people are trapped in this world and it seems that it will last forever.

Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, University of the West Indies

Event Information:
February 16th, 2008
Free Event

St. Michael
 (246) 417-4776