In celebration of June as National Caribbean Heritage Month, Atlanta is once again hosting its annual Caribbean Film Festival. The 2019 Caribbean Film Festival in Atlanta will be presented under the auspices of the Diaspora Cultural Curators in collaboration with the Auburn Avenue Research Library.
The lineup is as follows:
Friday, June 14th at 6:00 PM: Poetry is an Island (St. Lucia). “This documentary presents an intimate portrait of the poet Derek Walcott set in his beloved native island St. Lucia. The place he always longs for, when he is taken to far away places by his universally acclaimed work…” (www.imdb.com) Refreshments will be provided by the St. Lucia Association of Georgia.
Saturday, June 15th at 12 Noon: Havana Time Machine (Cuba) “Nowhere else on the planet does the past inform the present, and the future embrace our past with the emotional power of today’s Cuba. Director Raul Malo explores Havana’s streets and culture in an intoxicating musical journey showcasing the US/Cuba collaborative in the thriving tropical kaleidoscope that is Havana’s soul” (www.amazon.com).
Saturday, June 15th at 1:30 PM: Green Days by the River (Trinidad and Tobago) “In Trinidad, British West Indies, 1954 – The coming of age story of a fifteen-year-old boy from the coastal village of Mayaro”. (www.imdb.com)
Saturday, June 15th at 3:30: Diggers (Panama). “Documentary film about the black men who came from the West Indies (primarily Barbados and Jamaica) to work on the construction of the Panama Canal from 1881 to 1914”. (www.amazon.com) This film features interviews with some of the actual canal workers, many of whom died soon after the documentary was made.
Sunday, June 16th at 3:00 PM: The Merikins (Trinidad and Tobago); “Centuries after the Atlantic Triangular Slave Trade, its routes continue to be conduits of strife, bondage and freedom. The story of the Merikin people forms a part of those histories. They had been enslaved on the East Coast of North America, and rose beneath the British flag to fight in the War of 1812, against those who they saw as their chief oppressors, the American plantocracy. At the war’s end, their fates were cast out and sent adrift to the shores of South Trinidad, an island to the very South of the Caribbean archipelago. This documentary dislodges their story from the crevices of history and breathes new life amid the dust of time and its forgetting”.(www.imdb.com)
Denis (Jamaica) Denis Filmmaker Gabrielle Blackwood should be in attendance to present her film and participate in a Q and A session. “Denis Mckenzie, a proud and independent family man from Jamaica, was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 43. The disease eventually renders him almost completely paralysed and speechless. Given five years to live, Denis tries, with the assistance of his wife, to fight the aggressive and emaciating illness. Interspersed with imaginative recreations, Denis is a touching, uplifting testament to the dogged and indomitable character of the human spirit” . (Caribbean Film Academy
Venue:Auburn Avenue Research Library
101 Auburn Avenue NE
Atlanta, GA 30303
http://www.afpls.org/events-aarl
