Aboard a giant slave ship in an abandoned Citroën factory, the film traces the history of the West Indies through several centuries of French oppression. The story traverses the West Indies, Europe, and the Middle Passage; jumps across time to depict the effects of official French policy upon the colonized, the enslaved, and their descendants; and surveys the actions and motivations of the resigned, the revolutionary, and the powers that be (along with their lackeys).
No mere extravaganza, West Indies is a call to arms for a spectacular yet critical cinematic reimagining of an entire people’s history of resistance and struggle. Med Hondo’s enduring masterpiece “invites the spectator to join in the struggle to transform the world.”
This event is part of Fugitive Journeys, a day long program on migrant labour, emancipatory struggles and the lasting impacts of French colonialism.
3-5PM: West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979) film screening
5-6PM: Panel discussion with Chris Ramsaroop, Melanie Newton and Kevin Edmonds
6:30-8PM: Souleymane’s Story (2024) film screening
*Register for films separately. Panel discussion is included with registration to West Indies.
Presented with the Caribbean Solidarity Network, UofT’s New College Community Engaged Learning and Caribbean Studies.
One of Africa’s most acclaimed directors, Abid Mohamed Medonn Hondo (Med Hondo) was born in Mauritania in 1936. At the age of twenty-five, he left his native Mauritania for France where he worked in kitchens, farms, and docks. Confined to menial labor that paid him less than French citizens, Hondo sought another path: acting. During his off hours, Hondo took drama courses. In 1966, he co-founded Griot-Shango theatre company. The group staged plays by Aimé Césaire, Kateb Yacine, and Guy Menga among many other Third World, Caribbean, and African writers, even performing early versions of what eventually became his grandscale epic West Indies (1979). Often labeled a “militant” filmmaker, across his career, Med Hondo developed rich and powerful forms of storytelling, drawn from the West African oral tradition of the griots. These are films that forcibly seek to dismantle what the director has called “the narrative and psychological mechanisms of traditional [Hollywood] dramaturgy,” in hopes of raising consciousness.