The
film is a compelling compilation of testimonies, voices
and opinions gathered around five continents.
The Live8 concert in July this
year, in London’s Hyde Park was set up to raise
awareness about the Black continent issues, but before
the first guitar riffs, the gig highlighted one single
home truth: Africans should do it for themselves! The
lack of performers from Africa in the initial line-up
raised eyebrows on every side of the argument.
Cue Ligali, an east London organisation
whose role is to monitor the media, act as complaint
body, be active in the educational field and raise awareness
on the issues that plague black communities up and down
the country: gun crime, rebellion against authority,
stop and search...On the same day, a day of African
remembrance was staged at the Hackney Town Hall and
the day-long event put together by Ligali is a “positive
day to remember the struggle against slavery, our ancestors
and their sacrifice in what is widely considered as
an holocaust,”' according to Emma Pierre-Joseph,
spokesperson for the organisation. She also told CEN
Magazine that it is “a forward-looking day to
provide a platform of reflection for the whole community
and its future.”
The centrepiece of the event is the
screening of a newly released DVD on the African slavery
trade, the shameful human trade officially abolished
in 1772 in the UK and its empire. Liverpool was the
unofficial capital of the slave trade with more than
10 millions souls from the continent‘s west coast
(Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal) transiting there, on their
way to build the new continent, America. Other towns
throughout Europe, shared that infamous tag Bordeaux,
Nantes, Bristol in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Barcelona
in Spain and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Winner already
of the best documentary prize at the Pan-African film
festival and Bridgetown film festival and with testimonies
ranging among others, from Dr M. Karenga, Amira Baraka,
Desmond Tutu, Dr Helena Woodward, Shaykh Muhammad Shareef
and Trevor Marshall. The film, is a compelling compilation
of testimonies, voices and opinions gathered around
five continents and more than 20 countries on the subject.
“'We went to universities as well as into the
neighbourhoods to talk to the common folk,” says
Asante Jr, the talented scriptwriter and poet, who was
a first year media graduate at the time when he started
working on the project.
HIV/AIDS, crime, drugs, low expectation,
and underdevelopment plague most people of African origin
throughout the world. 500 years later, after slavery,
colonialism, the cold war and subsequent neo-colonialism,
daughters and sons of the continent are still suffering
and cannot enjoy basic freedom or wealth. Told from
the continent vantage-point, the film scrutinises the
holocaust and subsequent uprooting of Africans from
their homeland and culture. In the words of producer-director,
Owen 'Alik' Shahadah, “500 Years Later chronicles
the struggle of a people who have fought and continue
to fight for the most essential human right: Freedom.”
Owen used to produce a stylish work
of art and set up a website www.500yearslater.com to
foster and further the debate, knowing that the film
has already garnered interest from education bodies
throughout the world, willing to use it as a teaching
method.
That might be exactly what African
communities in the UK need, as reveals Asher D, the
rapper and member of the So Solid Crew collective in
his subsequent Channel 4 documentary aired in November
2004, surfing on the same subject, but neighbouring
issue of the 'N word' (nigger/ nigga).
“It's definitely an issue that
people of my generation don't know enough about black
history and that's a point I raise throughout the programme.”
He finishes with “when it comes to the teaching
of black history, there is none” and for the first
time, our rulers seem to agree with him, as Liverpool's
Riverside Labour MP Louise Ellman called for the Blair-Brown
government to introduce teaching slave trade history
in British schools and asked for a national day of remembrance.
117 MPs across the chamber joined her and settled for
the debate to take place in the commons, during Black
History month in October this year. However, on the
question of responsibility, which could trigger lawsuits
and potential reparations, the government washed its
hands of the problem, stating that it “cannot
take responsibility for what happened over 170 years
ago” even if it recognizes that “the slave
trade is one of the worst examples of man's inhumanity
to man” and added that it wasn't an unlawful act
at the time the British government condoned it. 500
Years Later the film's sequel will be released in 2006,
focusing on AIDS/HIV, the colonisation of the African
continent, neo-colonisation, the ill-effects of globalisation
with a chapter on Bretton-Woods institutions like the
World Bank and the IMF.
The film has an obvious quality, for
its combination of thoughtful photography signed by
the director Owen, retrospective voices and using a
multi-media platform to get its point across, which
could see him becoming a benchmark in filmmaking history.
Although filed with facts, it relies on a gripping narrative
infused by the flavour and a soundtrack for poetical
freedom and liberation. Showing the chains that tied
their ancestors and contemporaries, it also offers a
serious path outside of the plantations.
Scriptwriter, Asante Jr is a poet master
with an interesting ability to transfer its art from
the written/spoken word to the screen and his influence
transpires throughout 500 years later. “To have
people be so receptive and come up to us crying and
embrace us after seeing the film is
just amazing,” reveals Asante Jr. “We worked
on the project for two and half years, and you just
don't know if people are going to like it; you are just
going on passion and what you think is right.”
Right he surely was.
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