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Director: Felix De Rooy
From: Curacao
Year: 1986 Minutes: 100
Language: Papamientu with English subtitles
Genre: drama
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Based on old legends, the film depicts a fictional agricultural community in an isolated part of Curaçao at the turn of the century. The central theme of the film is the struggle between creative and destructive forces.
In the village of Desolato, Solem, the priestess protects the villagers from Alma Sola, the symbol of evil, the patriarch of the "shons", the white landowners. Alma Sola has the power to transform into male, female or animal and always strikes when vigilance of Desolato weakens.
Solem has sacrificed her fertility for the welfare of the community. Therefore she is not allowed to have a relationship with a man. Her longing for physical love provides Alma Sola with an opportunity to lead her stray.
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Paul Robeson Prize for Best Diaspora Film, FESPACO 1991
35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Felix de Rooy
From: Holland/Curacao
Year: 1990 Minutes: 100
Language: Dutch and Papamientu w/ English subtitles
Genre: drama
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The story takes place on the island of Curacao in the late Forties.Upon request of Father Fidelius, parish priest of St. Anna's, the Surinam painter Gabriel Goedbloed arrives from Holland to paint a mural of the Virgin Mary in St. Anna's Church. The drama unfolds from different angles. First the clergy and locals are confused by the fact that the painter is black, originating from Surinam, but resettled in The Hague, where he received a Fine Art education.
The close knit Antillian society did not welcome strangers who would not conform to their colonial way of life in those days. Contributing factors arise when he chooses a young teacher, Miss Ava Recordina, who is from mixed origin, to be his model for the painting of the Virgin Mary. Ava is engaged to the white police major Carlos Zarius who is not too happy with his fiancé posing for the painter.
The fact that the Dutch Governor's wife, Louise van Hansschot, is interested in Gabriel also fuels the tension. In the end, Gabriel Goedbloed falls victim to the controversies, hypocrisies and intrigues that have arisen around his person and his paintings.
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Jury Prize, Festival International de Cine Latino Americano, Havana Cuba, 1990
35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Menelik Shabaz
From: Jamaica and UK
Year: 1995 Minutes: 30
Language: English
Genre: docu-drama
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Catch a Fire tells the story of Deacon Paul Bogle, often described as a 19th century Malcom X. 30 years after the end of slavery in Jamaica, the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 provoked outrage in Victorian Britain shaping race and land attitudes. The story is constructed using extensive interviews with Paul Bogle's grand son as well as archive material.
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video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Cheikh Djemai
From: Martinique/France/Algeria/Tunisia
Year: 2001 Minutes: 52
Language: French with English
Subtitles
Genre: Documentary
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Frantz Fanon, was a psychiatrist, originally
from Martinique, who had become a spokesman for the Algerian
revolution against French colonialism. Embittered by his
experience with racism in the French Army, he gravitated
to radical politics, Sartrean existentialism and the philosophy
of black consciousness known as negritude. His 1952 book,
''Black Skin, White Masks,'' offers a
penetrating analysis of racism and of the ways in which
it is internalized by its victims. While secretly aiding
the rebels of the Algerian anti-colonial war as a doctor
in Algeria, Fanon cared for victims and perpetrators alike,
producing case notes that shed invaluable light on the
psychic traumas of colonial war. Expelled from Algeria
in 1956, Fanon moved to Tunis where wrote for El Moudjahid,
the rebel newspaper, founded Africa's first psychiatric
clinic, and wrote several influential books on decolonization. Frantz Fanon, His Life, His Struggle, His
Work traces the short and intense life of
one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.
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VHS rental: $90
VHS sale: $295
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Fritz Baumann
From: Jamaica and Germany
Year: 1992 Minutes: 90
Language: English
Genre: docu-drama
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Brother Howie is a Jamaican Rastifari who dreams of the land of his ancestors: Africa. On a journey in search of his roots and his identity he travels through three continents and - with great humor and sensitivity - discovers the world...and Africa.
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16mm rental: $250
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Claudette Coulanges
From: Haiti/Germany
Year: 1999 Minutes: 60
Language: Creole and French with English subtitles
Genre: documentary
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Looking
for Life introduces the viewer to two women, Anne-Rose
and Rosemene, who each one has their own particular way of
battling through life. The former makes lunches in a factory
yard in Port-au-Prince and sells her meals to the factory
workers; the latter is employed in the same factory as a production
worker making pullovers and T-shirts. Every day she buys her
midday meal on credit from Anne-Rose. Through the connection
between these two women the film shows part of their daily
work and the constant battle for survival that they lead together
with other women in Haiti. Going beyond this, however the
film demonstrates the extent to which the importation of North
American goods has brought about the collapse of Haitian regional
production and ruined Haiti's economy. The connection between
the two topics of the film reveals the significant role that
Haitian women of today play in an economy that has been bled
dry.
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16mm rental: $290
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Sergio Giral
From: Cuba
Year: 1979 Minutes: 95
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Genre: Historical Drama
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Maluala takes us into a
palenque, a settlement of escaped slaves hidden somewhere
in Cuba's eastern mountains, where discord is sown between
black "kings" by clever subversives working for the Spanish
government.
"Sergio Giral is the best known of the Black Cuban
directors and his previous films were historical observations
of the period of slavery in Cuba, the gradual rise of rebellion
against colonial traditions, and the ultimate freedom that
resulted. Maluala is the most striking addition to this
genre. The action takes place during the last century in
the region of Maluala. Gallo, the black chieftain, together
with his cohort, Coba, present a petition for land and liberty
to the colonial government. Governor Escudero offers liberty
if the rebellious villages will be dismantled and their
men offer themselves in surrender. He promises that they
will be freed shortly thereafter. Three chieftains agree,
but Gallo and Coba refuse…. Giral has mounted Maluala
with colorful ritual and acting. Samuel Claxton, as Gallo,
is highly stylized in the heroic tradition. It is an absorbing
adventure film wrought from historical events which appear
violent, but Giral constantly implants into every image
the necessity for unity among people in order to combat
man's seemingly casual desire to subjugate mankind, in the
struggle for power and undefined ambition." ~ San Francisco
Film Festival, 1980
“The historically lucid intrigues of Maluala
(1979), where the Afrocentric leadership of fugitive
palenque communities is pitted against each other COINTELPRO-style
by Spanish colonists, is one of those Cuban films that were
forged in a righteous, red-hot ferment but still found the
courage and wit to ask questions about the society around
them.” ~ Gary Dauphin, The Village Voice
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video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Sergio Giral
From: Cuba
Year: 1986 Minutes: 96
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Genre: drama
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Placido portraits the dramatic story of Gabriel de la Concepcio Valdes (Placido), a mulatto Cuban poet accused of leading a conspiracy against the Spanish colonial government. Preoccupied by the development of Afro-Hispanic artist and craftsmen of the mid XIX century, Placido was executed after living a short and controversial life as a man between two races and between a cruel reality and a dream of freedom.
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video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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Director: Alessandra Muller
From: Cuba/Switzerland
Year: 2005
Minutes: 76
Language: Spanish with English
subtitles
Genre: Documentary
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Donde Esta Sara Gomez ? / Sara Gomez, an Afro-Cuban Filmmaker
is a rich, multilayered documentary about Afro-Cuban director
Sarah Gomez. Born in 1943, she studied literature, piano,
and Afro-Cuban ethnography before becoming the first female
Cuban filmmaker. A woman of great intelligence, independence
and generosity, she was a revolutionary filmmaker with intersecting
concerns about the Afro-Cuban community and the value of
its cultural traditions, women's issues, and the treatment
of the marginalized sectors of society. Through archival
footage of her works and interviews with her children and
husband Germinal Hernandez, cast members of her best-know
film De cierta manera,as well as colleagues and friends,
we get closer to a filmmaker who invented new landscapes
and brought together opposite worlds.
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video rental: $90
video sale: $295
DVD sale: $295
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Director: Octavio Cortazar
From: Martinique/Cuba
Year: 1992 Minutes: 52
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Genre: docu-drama
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A fascinating film on the rhythmic dance genre known as Rumba, La Ultima Rumba de Papa Montero dances around the life of Papa Montero, one of the famous rumberos of Cuba, assassinated during carnival. A discovery of Cuban traditions and every day life told through beautiful images, sensual music and dance. The use of Afro-Cuban mythology is the force behind the characters as orishas guide the characters' fate.
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video rental: $90
video sale: $195
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