his year is the 50th Anniversary of the legendary Jamaican film, The Harder They Come (1972). Hugely successful in Jamaica, it also reached an international market and was a pioneering film in its portrayal of black Jamaicans on screen, accented by the use of patois throughout the film and punctuated by the fact that Director Perry Henzell used a local production team. Jamaican writer, Trever D. Rhone co-wrote the script with Henzell. The Harder They Come is often hailed as the most influential Jamaican film of all time and one of the most recognised films from the Caribbean. The film, celebrated for the ground-breaking representation of authentic Jamaican culture in feature film format, impacted Caribbean audiences, the youth of the diaspora and foreign film goers alike. It still resonates today and has cult status. The reggae soundtrack is legendary and was said to have “brought reggae to the world.” It included Jimmy Cliff, Toots & The Maytals, Desmond Dekker, The Slickers, The Melodians and Scotty. The film stars Jimmy Cliff as Ivan the rebel reggae singer set on a getting into the fiercely competitive music industry. Carl Bradshaw, Ras Daniel Hartman, Toots Hibbert, Prince Buster, Leslie Kong also star in the film.
