Jamaican film maker nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival
Kingston, Jamaica – Jamaican film maker Karen Marks Mafundikwa has received a nod for her poetic documentary ‘The Price of Memory’ by earning a nomination for the Best Documentary Feature and People’s Choice Award.at the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival to be held in Port of Spain from September 16 – 30, 2014.
For Mafundikwa, who is the Senior Consulting Officer in JAMPRO’s Film Commission and Creative Industries Unit, ‘The Price of Memory” has been a labour of love for the past 11 years, which she describes as the end of a creative journey and a professional milestone. The documentary explores the enduring legacy of slavery in Jamaica and the decades-long movement for slavery reparations.
The director started the film project when she decided to make a brief documentary on Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Jamaica to celebrate her Golden Jubilee. She said, “While in Jamaica I encountered a group of Rastafarians that had come to present an official petition to the Queen for reparations. This chance meeting inspired me to make a full-length documentary film exploring the legacy of slavery in the UK and Jamaica and various actions around reparations. Reparations were frequently from an international perspective but never from the Caribbean.”
After conducting extensive research Mafundikwa travelled across England and filmed in the cities where the legacy of slavery was most evident. “I finished the Price of Memory eleven years later and I would do it all again because it allowed me significant personal and professional growth,” she said.
To date, the documentary has been screened in Los Angeles at the Pan African Film Festival, the Africa in Motion Film Festival 2014 and Just Festival 2014 in Glasgow and is currently in negotiations for other United Kingdom distributions. The film will premiere in Kingston on Sunday, September 7 at 3 p.m. at Neville Hall Lecture Theatre (N1), Faculty of Humanities, UWI Mona.
Mafundikwa is also credited with another documentary feature ‘Shungu: The Resilience of a People’ (2009 which won the Ousmane Sembene Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival 2010 and Best Documentary, Kenya International Film Festival 2010. The film also screened at the IDFA and BFI London. She holds a BA in Broadcast Journalism and Anthropology from New York University and an MSc in International Development from the Tulane University School of Law.
