Genre: Documentary
Director: Hélène Lee
Cast: Leonard Howell
Writers:
Rating: M
Run Time: 86 min
Synopsis
At the beginning of the last century, the young Leonard Percival
Howell (1898 - 1981) left Jamaica, became a sailor and travelled
the world. On his way, he chanced upon all the ideas that stirred
his time. From Boshevism to New Thought, fram Ghandi to anarchism,
from Garveyism to psychoanalysis, he sought to find his promised
land. With this cocktail of ideas Leonard "Gong" Howell returned to
Jamaica and founded Pinnacle, the first Rasta community in
1939.
By Recreating a backdrop of that time from film achives, police
reports and newspaper articles, we follow in the wake of this
adventure and track the evolution of his thinking. Through direct
witnesses we trace his evolution, from his return home in 1932 to
the first manifestations of his movement. For the first time, these
centenarian survivors describe a Rasta movement that is very
different from the usual clichéd images.
Their interviews, sparkling with humor and common sense, outline
not only the silhouette of a great leader, but the daily struggle
of a handful of men and women who stand without fear in the face of
an all powerful global system. An example of incredible moral
courage at a time when black people in America and Africa were
still considered to be sub-human and were subjected to forced labor
and racial discrimination. They paid the price for this bold stand
through relentless persecution and through systematic
misinformation bent on makeing them look crazy.
This documentary sheds a new light on the Rasta Movement, its
origins and vision.