Amazing Grace: Corresponding with the distributors

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Not wishing to wait for Galleria Cinemas to get back to us, the National Commission on Cultural Development (of which I'm the Deputy Chair) contacted the distributors for the film Amazing Grace to see what the story is on the release of the film to the Caribbean.Now. Let me make my position clear here, lest people get sidetracked by the politics of the whole thing. I tend to agree with Frances-Anne about the reasons behind the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery itself, although I would go further and say that I believe that the abolitionist movement sprang from a genuine crisis of conscience. The fact that this gained political mileage when it did had plenty to do with power-struggles and economics, and the fact that the industrialists and factory owners who were gaining economic strength in Britain wanted to break the backs of their powerful predecessors, the land-owning aristocracy and the planters overseas. I don't, however, discount the question of conscience.The problem is that conscience is often compromised by prejudices and bigotry, which are often so unconscious that they are invisible to those who practise them. The release of the film Amazing Grace provides a fascinating study in the juncture of bigotry and conscience -- if indeed there are no plans to release it in the Caribbean.This is one fact I'm still investigating.So here is the email sent by me on behalf of the Cultural Commission to the distributors:

Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 3:04 PMSubject: Amazing Grace - Limited Release?I am writing from Nassau, Bahamas, to inquire about the release of the film Amazing Grace in The Bahamas.I currently serve as the Deputy Chair of the National Commission on Cultural Development, a government-appointed group whose purpose is to monitor and oversee cultural activity and development for The Commonwealth of The Bahamas. One of our main foci in 2007 is the Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Countries throughout the former British West Indies are observing this Bicentenary, which has fundamental significance for our populations and for our nations.As part of our commemorative activities, we wish to urge all Bahamians to view the film. However, it is not currently screening here. Inquiries of the Galleria Cinemas, the only distributor of mainstream movies in the nation, revealed that the film is in limited release and is not available to The Bahamas for showing.Given that the Abolition Act championed by William Wilberforce and his Abolitionists directly affected the British West Indian colonies, of which The Bahamas is one, we find the unavailability of this film, which provides an account of his struggle, beyond our comprehension.The National Commission on Cultural Development for The Government of The Bahamas wishes to invite a response from the distributors of the film regarding the screening of Amazing Grace in The Bahamas, and would be grateful for any light you might shed on this matter.Sincerely,Nicolette BethelDeputy Chair, National Commission on Cultural DevelopmentNassau, Bahamas

I received the following response from Roadside Attractions, one of the distributors (there are two - Samuel Goldwyn's the other):

Unfortunately, we don't hold the international rights to the film. Any inquiries about the Bahamas should go to the film's producers Bristol Bay Productions. They can be reached here: www.bristolbayproductions.com.

Amazing Grace Update

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I just got off the telephone from Galleria Cinemas.

Several inquiries were received by the Cinemas about the movie Amazing Grace.  Accordingly, I was told the following:

  • Although the film is showing in the USA at the moment, and will open in the UK and Ireland tomorrow (March 23, 2007), it is in limited release. Galleria's distributors will let the cinemas know when it is available to be shown in The Bahamas.
  • I expressed the concern -- shared, clearly, by the National Cultural Commission -- that the anniversary of the signing of the Act is on Sunday, and that the only film currently available about the event is not showing in The Bahamas, a country fundamentally affected by the Act.

If the film is not intended to be released in the Caribbean at the time of the Bicentenary of the Abolition, then that is a significant lapse of judgement of the filmmakers and the studio. There is really very little to be gained, either for history or for Christianity itself, to show the film in the homes of the people who perpetrated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and not to do so in the homes of the societies that were created by that very trade.

Something is askew.

edit: It seems as though the film was indeed initially in limited release. Since then, however, the distributors have increased its availability. Whether that availability extends beyond the USA or the North American continent remains to be seen; I am emailing the distributors to find out for myself.

Top Ten Caribbean Works of Fiction (again)

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So there's now an interesting exchange going on in the comments of Geoffrey's post, where the fundamental question of how to choose the top is being debated.Frances-Anne, who, from her reference to Trinidad, isn't likely to be who I thought she might be, says:

1) I resist the idea of "best" in this context (creation) as it reminds me of school in Trinidad "Good better best, never let it rest til we make our good better" that whole anglican ethic of competition and never being good enough, that pit us against each other to be judged by someone called "Cambridge". So I'm suspicious of this judging of "best", who is judging and by what standards?2) as has been reflected above Caribbean literature though in its flowering right now, has not been widely read, so people's choices will be determined not by "best" or even "favorite" but by what was forced on them at school or if they were lucky university. Reducing choices for the most part to Naipaul, Rhys, Lovelace, and Lamming, and only in general one of each of these. Not representative.

It's a basic point, and one well worth debating. But from my point of view, canons start somewhere. At this stage, I believe that we have to start with Naipaul, Rhys, Lovelace and Lamming, just because they are the ones that get forced on us (what about Anthony? What Caribbean schoolchild hasn't read A Year in San Fernando or Green Days by the River -- Cricket in the Road being eschewed by people like us Bahamians, to whom cricket is a foreign language). The fact that we "all" have these four in common makes them representative, and is worth exploration. The questions that follow — why these four? What do they represent? What does their selection tell us? — are equally important, and even fundamental to our understanding of our Selves.What's more, the fact that we have "all" read these writers means that we are all writing in response to, or inspired by, these four. This fact is not incidental, and it's why I support the teaching of Dead White Male writers to people who want to be writers. Because the vast majority of European literature was developed in the shadow of the Bible and Homer and Shakespeare, it is fundamental for people who wish to continue in that mode to read them. For us in the Caribbean who intend to continue working with the written word as word-on-page, they are part of our canon too, or they should be. We can't understand Lamming without knowing Caliban; we can't understand Walcott without understanding Homer; we miss part of Achebe's messages if we are ignorant of Yeats, and we can't even appreciate Brathwaite as we should without a familiarity with Eliot.I believe canons are there to tell us about who we are, what we regard as literature, and — more fundamentally still — to help us understand the others. I don't believe that our oppression should make us ignore them. Know thine enemy makes as much sense today, among us all, as it ever did.

Still More - Amazing Grace

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Letter sent by National Commission on Cultural Development to Galleria Cinemas re: Amazing Grace:

ManagerGalleria CinemasNassau BahamasDear [Sir]:

Re: Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolitionof the Trans-Atlantic Slave Tradeandthe Film Amazing GraceAs you are no doubt aware, 2007 marks the Bicentenary of the Abolition by the British Parliament of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.In 1807, following a decades-long struggle in Britain on the part of the Abolitionists, led principally by William Wilberforce, the British Parliament agreed to outlaw the capture and enslavement of Africans and their transportation across the Atlantic to the colonies of the Americas. The Act in question was signed on 25th March, 1807.It was with some interest and excitement that the members of the National Commission on Cultural Development noted that a film had been made, inspired by the life and work of William Wilberforce and the activities of the Abolitionist Movement in Britain at the turn of the Nineteenth Century. Even more than that, Amazing Grace examines the role of the Protestant and Evangelical churches in this movement. Given the strong Christian sensibilities that prevail among Bahamians, the Commission looks forward to promoting the film as an official activity of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.Amazing Grace opened in the USA on February 23, 2007. It is set to open in the UK on March 23, 2007. The official date set by the United Nations for the observance of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is March 25, 2007. However, to date, Amazing Grace is nowhere to be found in The Bahamas. We wish to inquire when your cinemas plan to bring the film to The Commonwealth, and invite you to join with us in commemorating this awesome milestone in the struggle of our ancestors towards Emancipation.We look forward to your response.Sincerely, etcTHE NATIONAL CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

Top Ten Caribbean Works of Literature

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I linked earlier (though late in the game) to Geoffrey Philip's semi-formal survey of the top ten works of Caribbean fiction.The process was two-tiered. The first part prepared a shortlist of twelve Caribbean works to be considered. This was done by a process of online nomination -- you could enter any book you thought was worthy of the honour -- and ended on the weekend. This part is a process of voting.I find the list interesting, if a little skewed. I admit that I misunderstood the purpose of the list, and tried to restrict my nominations to books I've actually read. Result: one big gun, in particular, is missing from the shortlist that should have been there -- Wilson Harris. But if I'm honest, I have never had the strength to finish his novels, as wide and meandering as the Demerara and as dense as the Guyanese interior. The list also betrays the probable age of the submitters -- it's weighted towards the mid-twentieth century.Anyhow, go vote for your top ten Caribbean works of fiction.

Stumbling towards freedom

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I began this year with an observance about the date. In The Bahamas, years with twos, threes and sevens in them are likely to be major anniversaries of things; and as the twos and the sevens are five years apart, they double one another. Years with eights in them are extensions of the years with threes as well.I say all that to say this. The fact that this is a big year in terms of our history and our identity has been overshadowed by the rather grubby fact that it's also an election year. The result is that most things have been politicized. What hasn't been politicized has been put on hold until the election's over. Good thing that we have to hold it by mid-year; otherwise this entire year could become an exercise in water-treading for anybody who wants to get real things done.Perhaps this is why we aren't discussing abolition and what it means for us. This should, of course, be a source of shame for us all. When the United Kingdom is making a big deal out of this year, and out of the anniversary that's coming up on March 25, we're strangely silent. Is it because people on the PLP are afraid to make too much out of it because of the long years of invoking slavery in election years (the running of Roots on ZNS, in 1977, 1982, and 1987, the references to Exodus) have rendered the concept of slavery impotent as a political tool? Is it because people in the FNM have rejected the concept of slavery because they believe that it alienates those people who are not the descendants of slaves?Something to think about.

A note about commenting

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I've never said this before, but for those of you new to my blog, I've got security for the comments set so that if it's your first comment, I have to approve it. Once you've had a comment approved, you can post as you like. Or else you can register as a subscriber to this blog (the option's on the side).Chris, that's why you had to post your comment twice. I check the blog at least once a day, usually about six times more than that, and moderated comments shouldn't hang around for more than a day or so.Cheers.

In Brazil, singers are ministers

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For those of you who aren't familiar with either Brazilian music or Brazilian politics, imagine a world where the Minister of Culture is a practising musician, and a world-famous one at that.This story tells the tale.For those who can't read it, here's how it begins:

ON Wednesday the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, is scheduled to speak about intellectual property rights, digital media and related topics at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Two nights later the singer, songwriter and pop star Gilberto Gil begins a three-week North American concert tour.Rarely do the worlds of politics and the arts converge as unconventionally as in the person of Mr. Gil, whose itinerary includes a solo performance at Carnegie Hall on March 20. More than 40 years after he first picked up a guitar and sang in public, Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira is an anomaly: He doesn’t just make music, he also makes policy.

Thinking about Emancipation: White Privilege

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There's a very interesting dialogue about race here, at the Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, and here, at the Anarchist Black Cross Network.On ABC, Peggy McIntosh writes:

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks....After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us".

I find much of this valuable, especially coming from a white (American) feminist. It's part of what I talk about when I refer to hegemony -- the idea that what is "normal" is actually what is white -- and, from the perspective of The Bahamas, what is white and other (what is white and Bahamian is actually a rather African-flavoured form of whiteness; more on that later). White Bahamians are not white Americans or white Europeans; their Bahamianness -- from the national cuisine to, these days, the national accent -- already rendering them different from the norm.Now McIntosh is, as I say, a white feminist. Sylvia, author of the Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, a pretty cool blog that considers issues of race and equality, written by a black (American) woman, while agreeing broadly with her principles, also critiques them. As she says:

There are three main problems with the essay and its framework. The first is its voice: the author is a privileged, white, intellectual, feminist, American woman with some level of financial self-sufficiency and physical ability, and her mode of explanation proceeds from these characteristics in its word choice and description. To say that each characteristic needs its own privilege study would be too obvious; to say that one characteristic should monopolize the discussions of privilege for everyone — too divisive. The second problem is its method of identifying white privilege: its language leaves the gate wide open for white people engaged in denial to invoke defenses leaning towards white pride or white guilt. The third problem is the list of characteristics surrounding white privilege would function easier if separated into categories of the types/classes of privilege instead of specific situations.

This last critique is impotant, for, as Sylvia observes, people can be both privileged and oppressed at the same time. See what she says herself:

The third problem cycles back to the first: McIntosh invoked the list of items that existed in her perspective of the knapsack. Ongoing discussions of privilege in a variety of disciplines point to intersectionality — the ability for people to live within different frameworks of oppression and privilege simultaneously. It is disheartening, but not unsurprising, to see a black man boggle at a black woman’s accusation that he shares in male privilege. His understanding only reaches to both of them suffering under privileged whites. These debates enclose incidences where a white lesbian suffering under heterosexist privilege and male privilege engages in racist behavior, or where an affluent Vietnamese-American male’s class privilege and assimilation into white supremacist xenophobia turns on the ambiguous category of lowerclass, undocumented “Hispanic” American workers. While privilege manifests differently in each concentric circle of oppression, it never alters its M.O. As a result, we as human beings cannot cry hypocrite when a victim in one cycle switches sides in another cycle — especially with our knowledge that all privileges sprout from a fundamental hierarchy equally lacking in exposure what it gains in power.

In this year when we observe the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, it's important that we understand that emancipation is not a simple thing. Oppression and privilege are not simple, after all. Victimology is an insidious process, and imperfect understandings of history, of self, of location, of hierarchy permit all kinds of oppressions that go unrecognized. In our society, where most of us, well coached by the American mass media to view "white" as one thing and "black" as another, undifferentiated, thing, tend to imagine ourselves universally oppressed, we ignore the very real oppression we visit on one another: outrageous racism against Haitians, unexamined violence against women and children, and actions founded in self-hate.I encourage people to check out these sites. Yes, they're radical. But they're worth a good hard look.

Amazing Grace

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On February 23, 2007, the film Amazing Grace opened worldwide in the USA.For people who don't know (and I'm assuming that there must be many of them here in The Bahamas, for reasons I'll tell you later), this film is, among other things, a look at William Wilberforce's abolitionist movement, the one that focussed Britons' eyes on the inhumanity of slavery, and which led the British Parliament first to abolish the transatlantic slave trade (whose bicentenary we celebrate this year) and, ultimately, to abolish slavery in the British Empire (1834), and to free the slaves (1834-1838).I have to say all this because nowhere is the film showing in The Bahamas.Now I have no idea why this is. One good reason, of course, is that commercial films in The Bahamas are controlled by a single conglomerate: Galleria Cinemas, which owns four commercial theatres in Nassau and Freeport, and which usually decides what the Bahamian public sees or doesn't see. So it is entirely possible that Galleria, looking at the costumes in the movie, thinking about the "dryness" of the subject, decided to pass on the film.This is something they do fairly regularly. As with many purveyors of mass entertainment in The Bahamas, the assumption is made that we are an undifferentiated mass of ignorami, and that no one will spend money on shows or performances that engages thought or reflection. (This attitude is as true of people producing live entertainment as it is of people importing films.) And so many films that I would like to see pass us by. It's one of the reasons that I don't go to the cinema; it's one of the reasons that our DVD collection is so vast. And it's one of the dangers -- a main and looming danger -- of having a monopoly governing commercial film distribution in the country. At least when RND Cinemas were still in operation, you had two sets of people making decisions, and sometimes those decisions would be different. Competition, what.There is, however, another, more sinister possibility. And it's this.The Bahamas Films and Plays Control Board viewed Amazing Grace and decided that it was not something that Bahamians ought to see.Now I don't have time to go into the implications of this. They are, I can assure you, rich with irony and fundamentally alarming. I'll come back to this blog to do this. But I'll leave you with these thoughts.

  • Ours is a nation made primarily up of the descendants of slave-owners and their slaves.
  • Ours is a nation whose political history is grounded uniquely and solely in the British Empire (yes, our social history is American. For the purposes of this discussion, that's irrelevant).
  • Ours is a nation that never tires of referring to itself as "Christian" (even though some of us, who respect and worship the Almighty in relative quiet, would like to take one step back to avoid the lightning bolt when it falls upon us for gross hypocrisy and overweening hate).
  • Amazing Grace is a movie about how the British Empire moved towards the abolition of the institution of slavery and the emacipation of the slaves.
  • The movers and shakers behind the Abolition crusade were Christians, and it was Christian principles that they used to argue their case and it was in the name of Christ that the battle was won.

Draw your own conclusions.

"Authentic" tourism

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Titilayo over at gallimaufry has an interesting post on the edgy side of tourism.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a guy from Argentina and he mentioned staying at a hotel in Brazil and seeing that their lists of activities for guests included a “ghetto tour”, a guided trip through one of the nearby favelas. Apparently slum tours of that sort are moving from being a novelty and becoming a recognised niche product: poverty tourism, also dubbed “poorism”, is growing in popularity amongst visitors to developing countries like Brazil, India and South Africa (although the South Africa tour doesn’t seem to be actively exploiting the poverty aspect as much as the others).

What's interesting to me about this is that this is the dark side of what I've often been preaching here at home, where tourism is controlled by huge conglomerates that cluster along the best beaches and block our view of the ocean God gave us, and where relatively little of the tourist revenue makes its way into people's pockets. I've been talking about the demand for "authenticity" in the tourist product, which is a rising demand, and one that certainly occupies much of the mainstream of the wealthier tourists, so much so that the Ministry of Tourism has begun to notice. I have long criticized our tourist product for being exclusively outwardly-focussed, for misunderstanding and misrepresenting what makes us us, seeking instead safe ways of packaging ersatz bits and pieces of performative culture (Junkanoo in the summer, hello) for "the tourists", and have suggested that what "the tourists" really want is the illusion that they have touched the real life that can be called Bahamian.There's a thin, thin line between "authenticity" and "poorism", though; and the arguments are not easy to resolve. They are uncomfortable -- the whole idea is uncomfortable -- but there's a little more to it; this is a Dalmatian of a problem, not something that's either black or white. You see, "poorism" does for the inner cities of many so-called developing countries what tourism has not yet done -- it puts tourist dollars directly into the pockets of the people who well may need them the most.But you decide.Here's an account from the Globe and MailHere's the comment that titilayo's riffing off ofHere's a completely different point of viewHere's how it's done in the StatesTownship tourism in South Africa

This

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is what greeted me this morning.feb28-screenshot.pngDoesn't seem to matter which theme I use.  So it is unlikely to  be a css problem; the theme it happened with last night was is as is, out of the box.What I'll probably do, then, is (a) keep researching to find the problem, which seems to be wordpress-wide, and (b) provide people with a Theme Switcher so that they can pick the theme they like.In time.

Update on the look of this site

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I'm testing this new theme out to see whether it's the theme or the server or something else. I suspect it is the theme -- the lovely Blue Zinfandel that I adapted to my purposes -- and I would like eventually to go back to it, because the red is my trademark, but this one will do for now.What I would appreciate, though, is if people who are interested could indicate whether they've had trouble with the look reverting to what WordPress users know is the default -- a blue header, a single column, and pretty straightforward styling.Cheers.

An apology

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The look of this site isn't staying put the way I want it. Seems that this version of Blogworld's developed the habit of snapping back to the default theme.I don't have time to work to find the bug at the moment. I've read up on it and believe it has something to do with some imperfect code. Not wrong code, but something that's just a little different that makes the server think that the whole theme is broken. And it switches after something happens -- don't know what, though. For some people it's comments, for others it's just a certain kind of access.It requires detective work for which I don't have time this morning. I hope to see about it this weekend.Cheers.

With all the talk about Bay Street Development

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... we might want to take a leaf from the Bajan book. Here's a great post from gallimaufry.ws about the beautification of Bridgetown, with pictures of the results.Here's a sample:

I took a stroll through town today and took some photos, and in the process realised just how much the city has been transformed. Places I used to avoid because they were so ugly and unattractive have become far more appealing. It’s really great.
independence square

The photo above is of Independence Square. A few months ago it was a run-down car-park. Now it’s an open space that can serve as a theatre, and with a statue of the nation’s first Prime Minister as its focal point (you can see the base of the statue from this angle, but not the statue itself; I should have chosen a better angle). I think it will look even nicer once the landscaping is really established.

We talk a lot -- about monuments, about beautification, about what-have-you. But we are not yet truly committed to put money behind the talk; we still tend to have a sense of waste about the spending on money on things that don't have apparent practical benefits -- or things, from another perspective, that don't have short-term, tangible returns.As though the long-term benefits that contribute to national and personal pride are irrelevant.

Talking writing/writing talking

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I had the great pleasure to spend hours this afternoon and evening with Lynn Sweeting, fellow blogger and old, old friend. We talked about writing, about ideas and identity and the place of art in the shaping of identity, in the telling of our collective tale. We talked about emancipation and knowing who you are, about knowing your history and how it shapes you, and how it doesn't; we talked lies and truth and the only Bahamian generation that really believed that the freedom that they talked about between 1967 and 1982 was real.And we talked about the responsibility of the writer in this space. And we vowed to write.Here's to Lynn.

Updating

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Things change, and we change with it.Much as I like the look of this site, I'm finding limitations with the theme that are slowing me down, as well as holding me back from doing what needs to be done with the information I want to share.I could tweak, but I don't have the time.So I'm thinking of changing the layout of this blog.I'm going to take my time about it, because I don't have a whole lot of that, but don't be surprised or dismayed if one day you come here and the place looks different.Cheers.---edit: I've been in touch with Brian Gardner, the author of the Blue Zinfandel theme I've adapted for Blogworld, and I want to say two things: one, that the theme I was finding limiting was the old theme, Teli Adlam's Simplicity, which seems no longer to be supported, and which hadn't been updated for a couple of years. And two, thanks to Brian, I've been able to tweak this one even more so that it does just about everything I want it to. Yay.

Safari

edit #2: I've discovered that there are pretty massive problems with the Red Zinfandel theme in Internet Explorer, which is a bummer, so back to Simplicity Red I go for now. When I have time to tweak again, I'll do so.*sigh*

edit #3: Brian Gardner kindly offered to look at my code and do some tweaking for me. As of now, things are considerably better.Thanks, Brian!