The 2023 Timehri Film Festival takes places from October 26 through 29, at Castellani House (Vlissengen Road and Homestretch Avenue) in Georgetown Guyana.

The opening night program, entitled the ones who shared their souls will feature The Procession by Hew Locke (Dir. Andrew Margetson, Guyana / UK), Just 3 People Talking (Joan Cambridge-Mayfield & Jeremy Peretz, Guyana) and Walter Rodney: What they don’t Want you to Know (Dir. Dir. Daniyal Harris-Vajda & Arlen Harris, UK). [See synopses below.]

Other selections include Freda (Dir. Gessica Généus, Haiti), Chee$e (Dir. Damian Marcano,
Trinidad & Tobago), Dementia: The Island Journey (Dir. Rianna Patterson, Dominica), Fortune for All (Dir. Yao Ramesar, Trinidad & Tobago), and It is not Past (Dir. Ida Does, Suriname), among others, including a wonderful array of short films.

The Procession by Hew Locke—Synopsis

The world is on the move. ‘The Procession by Hew Locke,’ from acclaimed contemporary Guyanese-British artist, Hew Locke, brings the viewer face-to-face with 140 individual sculptures, representing a procession of adults, children, and horses.

Each figure carries the weight of their historical and cultural past, from global financial and violent colonial control, as evidenced in the embellishments on their clothes and banners, alongside commanding images that capture some of the colonial architecture of Locke’s childhood spent in Guyana.

Such historical, financial and colonial roots continue to surround mass movement of populations, and the resulting film is at once a protest, carnival, ritual and flight to safety.

Unveiled as a long continuous shot, the film features Locke’s sculptural installation entitled ‘The Procession’, Tate Britain’s Annual Duveen Hall Commission of 2022. Set within Tate Britain, founded by the sugar magnate Henry Tate, the film contextualises its environment and the building’s links to the colonial past, as the audience enters through its grand arches into a world that seeks to reinforce the joint importance of marching forwards as well as demanding an ongoing deeper reflection on the past.

“We don’t know where they’re going, but we hope it’s to a better future.” Hew Locke

Just 3 People Talking—Synopsis

Not many Black women own a piece of the Amazon rainforest in our protracted age of gendered and racialized extraction. This Filmic meditation introduces audiences to one such person, Aunty Joan, whose possession of 357 acres of precious land remains far from settled. Informed by Afro-Indigenous Guyanese Spiritualist Komfa philosophies and practices, Joan is also Dolly, her ancestor Jumbi thought to be bassidy, or “flighty.” A journalist and novelist now in her eighties, Joan has been working for decades along with her spirit guide Bassidy Dolly to realize her dreams for Yukuriba Heights, a once-self-sustainable farm and projected arts commune.

Walter Rodney: What they don’t Want you to Know—Supported by The Walter Rodney Foundation & The Ameena Gafoor Institute—Synopsis

Walter Rodney: What they don’t Want you to Know, is an original circa 72-minute documentary featuring a murder, Cold War conspiracies, Black Power, the end of Empire, and how that connects to the policing and surveillance practices of today.

It reveals that Guyanese historian Dr Walter Rodney was under British security surveillance from the age of 19, after visiting Russia and Cuba while a student at UWI in Jamaica. He was seen as subversive both as an academic and as an activist who supported anti-colonial movements and civil rights. Rodney was assassinated in 1980 by the Guyanese regime put in power and supported by the British and Americans. By the time of his death, he was under surveillance by at least five different nations. Shockingly, a British secret propaganda unit paid for a negative review of his major work. It was only in 2021 that the Guyanese government accepted responsibility for the assassination.

See full film schedule at https://timehrifilmfestival.com/festival_schedule/

[Festival art shown above by Dominique Hunter.]