Event

LIFE AND DEBT

Narrated by Jamaica Kincaid (reworking the second-person narration of her 1988 classic A Small Place), Blacks breakout 2001 documentary interrogates the power structures imposed by the Bretton Woods organizations on so-called developing economies, and the psychological chasm that separates a nations exported reputation from reality on the ground. LIFE AND DEBT investigates International Monetary Fund levers in agonizing detail: structural adjustments designed to keep Jamaicas post-colonial government in permanent debt, brutal export subsidies on agriculture, and loopholes for American fashion companies many of whom are directly namechecked in the film, via first-hand testimonies from textile workers, paid an infinitesimal wage by American standards.

Not unlike the reggae-intensive soundtrack (featuring tracks by Peter Tosh, Buju Banton, Sizzla and the Marleys), the film finds melancholy drenched in beauty. While its a tired trope to call a films cinematography sumptuous, Black and her team of cinematographers (including Malik Sayeed) use their 35mm palette to sharply play Jamaicas endemic lushness against itself, interrogating tropical tourist desire as its own system of imaging and control. Arguably the most rigorous dissection of postcolonial economic policy ever committed to film, LIFE AND DEBT is a penetrating critique of what the New World Order actually means for millions, and a sober-eyed ode to a culture in embattled flux.

Read more: http://www.spectacletheater.com/stephanie-black/