Tuff Gong Pictures "Life and Debt" is showing at the
NuArt Theater until Thursday.
By Azadeh Farahmand
Daily Bruin Contributor
In a marriage of independent media practices and alternative
filmmaking, the L.A. Indy Media, in association with the Jamaican
Cultural Alliance, presented a benefit screening of “Life and
Debt” Wednesday in the Pacific Design Center in Los
Angeles.
The film, which screens at the NuArt Theater through Thursday,
is a documentary about the activities of the International Monetary
Fund and impacts of globalization in Jamaica.
Wednesday’s benefit screening was followed by a
question-and-answer session with the filmmaker, Stephanie Black.
There was also a panel discussion with UCLA history professor
Robert Hill and Hanna Petros, a founder of Ostawi, a nonprofit
organization for the promotion of economic and environmental
alternatives in Africa.
Petros applauded Black for putting a human face on the tragedy
that has plagued Jamaica. Playing on the pun in the film’s
title, Hill stated that it is in fact “death” on top of
“debt” that is haunting in this film.
“Watching this film as an experience made me very
angry,” Hill said. “It is a powerful visual statement
and thank you for giving me back my country, even (though) it
hurts.”
By juxtaposing natural scenery and lush landscapes with a series
of interviews and revealing footage that look at globalization from
ground up, “Life and Debt” unearths the reality of
economic decay that is growing beneath the lovely,
tourist-attraction surface.
In exchange for loans offered by the IMF and the World Bank,
recipient nations must adhere to “strict structural
adjustment” programs. The film chronicles how the strings
attached to borrowing money have plunged the local economy into
increasing debt and devastated industries such as the banana, meat,
poultry and dairy industries in Jamaica.
In the film, Jamaican farmers speak out about the evaporating
market to sell their produce since imported products sell for
unbeatable prices. Gallons of fresh milk are shown spilled to waste
since there is no local or export market for them, all due to the
absence of protective measures to safeguard local industries. And
as though in disbelief at the wasting of their milk, cows stand
perplexed, staring into the camera.
UCLA film professor Teshome Gabriel praised the film for its
mixture of stunning visual and music of various kinds.
“The thing that really fascinated me is that every single
person who spoke ““ the common people, the street people, the
Rasta brothers, these common women, and the professor ““ their
level of knowledge and intelligence about this issue is beyond
belief,” Gabriel said.
For the filmmaker, the film’s significance lays in
revealing impacts of policies that are not readily visible.
“Part of the reason that these institutions can go on is
because people do not know what they are doing,” Black said.
“My hope is that the film will somehow create a kind of
public watchdog.”
What brings the film close to the aim of the L.A. Indy Media is
its exploration of a contemporary subject that affects lives of
million people around there world, and about which there is little
information available.
L.A. Indie Media is an affiliate of the Independent Media
Center. IMC formed in response to the lack of coverage of the 1999
protests at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle ““
one of the earliest and most visible instances of
anti-globalization protest in the United States. IMC is a
multi-faceted and non-hierarchical collective of independent media
organizations and journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate
news coverage.
“It also has an open (Internet) publishing site, so it
directly responds to the collapse of civic discourse in
particularly the American society,” said Alan Minsky of L.A.
Indie Media.
The Feb. 6 event was held on the birthday of legendary
Jamaican-born singer Bob Marley. Marley’s songs that
accompany images of the contemporary Jamaican situation in the film
question the disparity between the mission of globalization and the
legacy of Marley’s “One world, One love.”
In spite of the specific situation it explores, “Life and
Debt” has a global reach in its contemporary urgency.
“It crosses boundaries ““ sexual, racial, national,
religious ““ it just goes far beyond,” Gabriel said.
“This is a sort of a prophetic film, because it was done
before 9-11, before the Argentine crisis. I think the more people
know about it, the more people begin to discuss the
issues.”