"From
dih pout | of mih
mouth
from dih | treacherous | calm of mih | smile
you can tell
I is a long memoried woman"
Introduction to the film
1990;
Dir. Frances-Anne Solomon.
Prod. Ingrid Lewis.
LedaSerene/Yod Video, released 1991, by Women Make Movies, distributor.
In English and Creole.
Runtime: 50 min.
Audience: High School to Adult.
Short Cuts this
webpage: Frances-Anne
Solomon | Grace Nichols | More
Web Resources
Film
Reviews on the LedaSerene website:
http://www.ledaserene.com/pages/memory1.htm
"Nanny in Europe," by Tony Hall:
http://www.ledaserene.com/pages/memory2.htm
"Shit Filth and Videotape," by Martina Attille
http://www.ledaserene.com/pages/memory3.htm
"I Will Enter You...," by Gwyneth Cumberbatch
http://www.ledaserene.com/pages/memory4.htm
Out
of the abusive conditions of the new world sugar plantations, this
unforgettable 1990 film of the African Diaspora, directed by
Frances-Anne
Soloman, offers a powerful rendering of female slavery and defiance,
survival and strength, in
dance-drama performance. The film presents a young African-Caribbean
woman's quest for survival and freedom in evocative dance, griot-style monologue
& song. Inter-segments present readings and commentary by Grace
Nichols, on whose award-winning poetry the film is based. I is a long
memoried woman (London: Karnak House, 1983) won Grace Nichols the
Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and the film was a Gold Award winner at the
International Film and Video Festival. [Summary
by Cora Agatucci.]
"I have crossed an ocean
I have lost my tongue
from the root of the old
one,
a new one has sprung"
Grace Nichols: "Epilogue," I Is A Long Memoried Woman
(London: Karnak House, 1983)
“A Gold Award winner at the International Film and Video Festival, I Is a
Long-memoried Woman is a powerful and moving cinematic experience based on a
collection of poems by Grace Nichols. This program by
Frances-Anne Solomon is
very successful at incorporating creative movement, archival photographs, and
special effects to make a statement about the African slave woman's experience
in a historical context. Men, primarily white, freely debased black women
and black men were generally impotent - unable if not unwilling to be heroic.
Nichols
says, ‘The book is a celebration of the endurance, vitality, and spiritual
strength of the black woman.’"
Interview clips with Grace Nichols contrast with “the soaring
performances of the actresses and dancers. The choreography demonstrates
strength, vitality, and an earthy, tongue-in-cheek angry humor when portraying
the white slave owners in elaborate 'white face' and period
costumes.”
--Reviewer: Marilyn Payne Phillips, ABC-CLIO Video Rating Guide
for Libraries on CD-ROM, 1990-1994. Courtesy of the Univ. of
California-Berkeley Media Resources Center Web site.
Available: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/LongMemoriedWom.html
[accessed Aug. 1998].
FRANCES-ANNE SOLOMON, director of I is a long
memoried woman:
"Frances-Anne Solomon grew up in Trinidad and
studied Theatre and English Literature at the University of Toronto, before
moving to the UK [United Kingdom], where she worked as a producer, director and
writer in film, television and radio for fifteen years before returning to
Toronto in 1999. As a producer and executive producer for BBC Films and Single
Drama in Great Britain, she was responsible for initiating and executing several
strands of films specifically geared towards new writers and directors and those
from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including SPEAK LIKE A CHILD directed by
John Akomfrah, THE SIXTH HAPPINESS, written by Firdaus Kanga, and
directed by Waris Hussein, and FLIGHT by Tanika Gupta. She also directed
several films including the powerful semi-autobiographical drama WHAT MY
MOTHER TOLD ME; the dance-drama I IS A LONG-MEMORIED
WOMAN, which won the Gold Award for TV Performing Arts at the New
York Film and TV Festival; and PEGGY SU! A feature set in a Chinese
laundry in Liverpool in 1962."
Solomon "is the President of Leda
Serene Films, an independent production company based in Toronto and
South Africa, with a ten-year track record in producing films that represent
diversity. She is also one of the project leaders for "Shifting
Images", a Toronto based initiative of The Cultural Pluralism in the Arts
Network."
--Biography courtesy of "Caribbean
Tales" (Leda Serene Films):
http://www.ledaserene.com/ctfrms.htm
[accessed Jan. 2002]
Frances-Anne Solomon formed
Leda Serene Films in 1990--a film, television and radio production and training
company with bases in Canada, the Caribbean and South Africa. Leda
Serene Films "places
People of Color in front of and behind the camera, and has made its name as a
producer of high quality dramas and documentaries, which celebrate diversity -
strong personal stories from different cultural perspectives in the global Diaspora":
--Leda Serene Films:
http://www.ledaserene.com
"It is said that the telling of stories is as vital a
human function
as living and breathing because through them,
races and peoples pass on the skills they need in order to survive."
--Ingrid Lewis (qtd. "Caribbean Tales")
Caribbean
Tales (Leda Serene Films):
http://www.ledaserene.com/ctfrms.htm
"Caribbean Tales is
a not-for-profit organization (date of incorporation is April 17th, 2001) that
aims to produce educational television, film and new media programs reflecting
the rich diversity of cultures of the Caribbean Diaspora, for use by both
Canadian and Caribbean-based organizations, individuals, and institutions."
GRACE NICHOLS - WWW Resources
Grace Nichols Teacher Resource File (Internet
School Library Media Center - ISLMC, "a meta-site for librarians, teachers,
parents and students):
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/nichols.htm
"Young Writer [Online] Readers
Interview Their Favourite Authors" Issue 11 (Jan.
1999): Interview with Grace Nichols by pupils from The Mount School, York [UK]:
http://www.mystworld.com/youngwriter/authors/grace_nichols.html
Biographical Header Note: "Grace Nichols was
born and educated in Guyana in the West Indies. She came to Britain in 1977
with her partner, the poet John Agard. They live in Sussex [UK]."
I Is a Long-Memoried Woman (WMM
Film & Video Catalog)
http://www.wmm.com/catalog/pages/c90.htm
offering these related web sites:
...Grace Nichols' poetry: http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~dm/nichols.html
...Russ Filman's Caribbean Literature, including an entry on Grace
Nichols (1950-), born Guyana; lived in Britain since 1977: http://www.freenet.hamilton.on.ca/~aa462/cariblit.html
"Grace Nichols' long-memoried woman represents a movement from Africa
to the Caribbean and also, I like to think, from the Caribbean into England,
into Canada, into the United States, back to the Caribbean. She is the
archetypal black woman of the Diaspora, carrying with her the stories of her
ancestors, reshaping these in the Caribbean and beyond. the historical focus
of the poems in this collection is highlighted by Nichols herself:
'the whole book is a journey of the black woman, uprooted from Africa and
taken into captivity to the Caribbean. the long-memoried woman embodies all
the experiences, the emotions, and the feelings that any slave woman would
have gone through '. She survives and 'in one sense the book is a
celebration of the endurance, the vitality and the spiritual strength of the
black Diaspora' (Solomon, 1990)."
--Merle Collins, "The Passion of
Remembrance":
Review of Grace Nichols' I is a long-memoried woman
(Karnak
House, 1983): http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/windrush/long_memoried.html
"I is a long-memoried woman is a powerful poem
tracing the journey
from Africa to the Caribbean of black women.
It won the Commonwealth
Poetry Prize in 1983."
--BBC Education: Windrush - ArtsLiterature
Guide: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/windrush/long_memoried.shtml
Literary Windrush 1948-1998 [Literary Essay on "Black British
Literature, or that literature written in English by Caribbean , Asian, African,
and other people who originated from the ex-British Empire"]:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/windrush/eswindrush_essay.html
What is Windrush? ..."the site aims to enlighten, entertain and inform you
about the achievements of African-Caribbeans over the past 50 years."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/windrush/windrush.shtml
"In 1997 John Agard [Grace
Nichols' partner] was appointed poet in
residence
in the BBC Education Department as an integral part
of their Windrush
season, a series of programmes marking the fiftieth anniversary
of the arrival
of the first five hundred immigrants to the UK [United Kingdom]
from the Caribbean on board the
troopship MV Windrush.
Here is an article he wrote for Poetry Review
about the 'Poetry Places' scheme."
http://www.poetrysoc.com/places/agardpp.htm
Grace Nichols (The Irish Poetry Page) offers the text of
her poem "Like a Beacon":
http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~dm/nichols.html
Guyanese
News & Information (Safraz
W. Ishmael, Guyanese graduate student, Univ. of Maryland),
including map, photos,
history, news, and more on Guyana--"at the point where the
Caribbean meets South America on its North Atlantic
seaboard."
http://www.guyana.org/
Guyana earned its independence from Great Britain on 26 May 1966.
Languages of Guyana from the Ethnologue: Languages of
the World (13th Edition, Barbara F. Grimes, ed., Summer
Institute of Linguistics, Inc.).
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Guyana
Ethnologue Country Index: http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp
Grace Nichols at the Tate Gallery: Visual Paths to Literacy Project
http://www.poetrysoc.com/places/tate.htm
from Poetry Places Archive:
http://www.poetrysoc.com/places/placeind.htm
HUM
211 Links: Diaspora
offers more African-Caribbean web
resources:
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/linksdiaspora.htm
More
Web Resources:
on I Is a Long Memoried Woman
Film
Notes: Table of Contents
URL:
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/coursepack/womanTOC.htm
1. "The Beginning" | 2.
"The Vicissitudes | 3. "The Sorcery"
| 4. "The Bloodling" | 5. "The
Return"
on The
African Diaspora:
HUM 211 African
Timelines Part III:
African Slave Trade & European Imperialism (CE/AD 15th - early 19th
centuries):
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline3.htm
Hum 211 Course Pack
Table of Contents
for more course web resources on
The African Diaspora: Backgrounds;
Olaudah Equiano; Amistad: The True Story;
I Is a Long Memoried Woman (Introduction & Film
Notes);
Religions of the New World African Diaspora; African Griots, &
more:
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/coursepack/index.htm
Hum 211 Links: Diaspora
for more WWW African-Caribbean web
resources:
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/linksdiaspora.htm
HUM
211 
Open
Campus Course Information
- Winter 2002
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Is a Long Memoried Woman ~ Introduction
URL of this page:
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/coursepack/womanintro.htm
Last Updated: 31 March 2005
This webpage is maintained by Cora
Agatucci, Professor of English,
Humanities Department, Central
Oregon Community College
I welcome comments: cagatucci@cocc.edu
© Cora Agatucci, 1997-2002
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