Price of Memory – Film Screening with Q&A

Tuesday October 4, 2016 at 7pm

College of Fine Arts Concert Hall
855 Commonwealth Avenue

The Boston University Art Galleries is pleased to present the documentary The Price of Memory including a Q&A session with director/producer/writer Karen Marks Mafundikwa.  The film screening, held in conjunction with the current exhibition Ebony G. Patterson: Dead Treez, expands on themes of Jamaican culture and and Caribbean post colonial politics. The event is free and open to the public and supported in part by an Arts Grant from the BU Arts Initiative – Office of the Provost and cosponsored by the Boston University African Studies Center and the African American Studies Program.

Synopsis

In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II visits Jamaica for her Golden Jubilee. While there, she is petitioned by a group of Rastafari for slavery reparations. For Rastafari, reparations is linked to returning to Africa, homeland of their enslaved ancestors. The film traces this petition and a reparations lawsuit against the Queen, while interweaving stories of earlier Rastas who pursued reparations in the 1960s. It explores the impact of slavery on independent Jamaica and how Britain benefitted from slavery. We follow the filmmaker’s journey during which the question of reparations reaches Parliament in Jamaica and the UK. Filmed over a decade, The Price of Memory is a compelling exploration of the enduring legacies of slavery and the case for reparations.