Music Movie Tuesdays: The Harder They Come

Tue 02 Aug 2011, 8 pm
Hanoi Rock City

From Hanoi Rock City:
HRC Presents: Music Movie Tuesdays.
Kicking off HRC’s Music Movie Tuesday’s is Jimmy Henzell’s 1972 masterpiece, ‘The Harder They Come’, starring reggae and ska singer, Jimmy Cliff. It was a milestone film for Jamaica – the first full-length feature shot in Jamaica by a Jamaican director with a fully Jamaican cast, ‘The Harder They Come’, brought the sights and sounds of Jamaica to overseas audiences for the first time; in particular, it made plain the jarring reality of the Kingston slums and gave some indication of the Rastafari way of life, sparking an interest for many in the island’s culture, particularly through its reggae soundtrack.

What is Music Movie Tuesday at HRC?
MMT is a new and free HRC film night every Tuesday from 8pm.
Once a week, fans of film and music are invited to come together and enjoy a music-heavy piece of cinema in the garden space, followed by a chilled DJ set from Dirty Fingrz.
Each film, documentary or recorded live performance, handpicked by the Hanoi Rock City team and our music-loving friends, will showcase everything from the obscure and the forgotten to the almost impossible to find, from cult classics to mainstream mega hits. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be crossing the continents and digging through the decades to build up a picture and a soundtrack to our modern lives; our cultures and sub-cultures, our memories, our realities, our moments of collective escape from reality… and the musical icons, communities and innovations which have altered and enhanced our experiences of being alive…

More info about ‘The Harder They Come’
The film adapts the story of Ivanhoe Martin, a notorious, real-life Jamaican criminal killed by police in 1948, to make broader points about the harsh realities facing migrants from the countryside in the island’s dehumanising capital, taking in the exploitation of the music industry and the illicit lure of the marijuana trade along the way. Jimmy Cliff’s sympathetic portrayal of the lead character – renamed Ivan O Martin – showed a determined character whose pride would not allow him to be beaten down, but whose desperation led to an inevitably gory demise. Through it, Henzell illuminated the widespread social injustice commonplace in the developing world.
Filming was halted on several occasions when money ran out, but the eventual opening of The Harder They Come, at the Carib theatre, Kingston, was a crazed affair that nearly resulted in a riot, and the film swiftly broke the island’s box office records. In contrast, its London debut at what was then the ABC cinema in Brixton saw such poor attendance that Henzell was forced to hand out leaflets at the local tube station in an effort to raise its profile among London’s expatriate Jamaican community. Fortunately, a more receptive audience at the 1972 Venice film festival brought an award for Best Young Cinema, and after years of Henzell’s efforts the film eventually came to be regarded a cult classic.

Free entrance.

See film trailer here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvIEfPxLjcY [/youtube]