DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Ask most people who was responsible for the influx of reggae and Jamaican culture into the U.S., and you’ll probably get Bob Marley back as a response. And while it was Marley who flooded the country and the airwaves, it was The Harder They Come, released a year before Marley’s debut, that opened the floodgates. The first feature film produced in Jamaica, the movie was a huge hit there, and managed to score some fans on the festival circuit, enough to get picked up by Roger Corman for U.S. distribution, where it failed miserably. But Corman was savvy enough to realize that the film’s rough-edged blaxploitation feel and infectious island soundtrack were a perfect fit for the burgeoning midnight movie movement, and the film became a cult smash, playing on the midnight circuit for most of the 70s.
The movie stars Jimmy Cliff, who was already a big star in Jamaica, but unknown here; though his contributions to the soundtrack probably did more to make him a U.S. star than his appearance in the film. Cliff plays a naïve singer who moves to Kingston to become famous; but he gets taken advantage of at every turn, most egregiously by a record producer who forces him to basically give away rights to his recording if he wants it to become a hit. Through a fairly implausible turn of events, Cliff becomes an outlaw and a folk hero. The plot contrivances are standard-issue exploitation fare, but its historical significance and that soundtrack, along with lots of revealing documentary style footage of life in Jamaica in the early 70s, make it a must-see.
View the trailer.
Screens Friday and Saturday night at the AFI; Saturday’s screening, in keeping with the movie’s roots, is at midnight.
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Cinematic Collaboration: The Italians
Film history is filled with Director-Actor pairings where both artists did much of their best work in tandem with the other. The Smithsonian’s Resident Associates program has been running a recurring program examining the mechanics of some of these relationships. Not a screening per se, the programs are mostly lectures, with film clips used to illustrate the points. This weekend’s lecture promises to be an excellent one, looking at two pairs, Federico Fellini & Marcello Mastroianni, and Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti. Max Alvarez, the film coordinator for the Museum of Women in the Arts, and film critic for the Washington Diplomat, leads the discussion.
Sunday afternoon from 1-4 p.m. at the S. Dillon Ripley Center as part of the Smithsonian’s Resident Associate Program. Tickets $15-$20.
