Keeling’s Caribbean Showcase

W.A.R. Stories

Clairmont Chung, 2010, 88min.

This documentary looks at the life of Dr Walter Rodney, one of the region’s great intellectuals and activists whose reach extended far beyond his native Guyana. Author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney was a fearless champion of justice all over the world. His assassination in 1980 shocked the Caribbean and brought into focus the work he was doing. The story is told through archival footage and interviews with contemporaries and family members. It's a story of a man who dedicated his life, and ultimately, gave his life in the struggle for equal rights and justice. He did so through his considerable intellectual gifts and actual grassroots involvement everywhere he went. The people who knew him weave a tale of how they related to him and him them. In the process we see the growth of their friend, brother, father, husband, his ideology and how that changed over the years from his coming of age in racially divided Guyana through the cold war, the Black Power Movement, Pan-Africanism, Caribbean independence, and the idea of self emancipation.

Post screening  Q& A with Director Clairmont Chung