‘The Price of Memory’ to premiere at Montego Bay Cultural Centre

The Montego Bay Cultural Centre and National Gallery West are pleased to present the Montego Bay premier of the documentary film, ?The Price of Memory,? on Saturday, October 18, starting at 7 p.m. Filmmaker, Karen Marks Mafundikwa, will be in attendance at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre, Sam Sharpe Square, to introduce the film and to answer questions afterwards. The event is free to the public but donations are welcome in support of the Montego Bay Cultural Centre programmes.

Filmed over the span of 11 years, ?The Price of Memory? explores the legacy of slavery in the United Kingdom and Jamaica and the initiatives and debates surrounding reparations. The film starts in 2002, with Queen Elizabeth II?s visit to Jamaica as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations, when she is petitioned by a small group of Rastafarians for slavery reparations. The film traces this petition and the first reparations lawsuit to be filed in Jamaica against the Queen, while interweaving stories of earlier Rastas who pursued reparations and repatriation in the 1960s.

The filmmaker travels to the UK, exploring the cities which grew wealthy from slavery and the British monarchy?s legacy of slavery, and follows the debates about reparations in both the Jamaican and British parliaments. ?The Price of Memory? premiered at the 2014 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2014 Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival in late September.

The Jamaican premier was at the University of the West Indies, Mona, on September 7 and received a standing ovation from the capacity audience. The October 18 screening of ?The Price of Memory? is also the launch of the National Gallery West/Montego Bay Cultural Centre film programme.

Mafundikwe is a Jamaican filmmaker who originates from Montego Bay and the opening scene of the film is set in Sam Sharpe Square. She holds a bachelor of arts in broadcast journalism and anthropology from New York University and an MSc in international development from the Tulane University School of Law.

Mafundikwa is also credited with the 2009 documentary feature, ?Shungu: The Resilience of a People,? which won the Ousmane Sembene Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2010 and Best Documentary in the 2010 Kenya International Film Festival.