I’ve blogged here before about the impact of Garveyism on South African cultural and political life, an area ripe for research. Which brings me to “The Prodigal Son,” a film by my friend, director Kurt Orderson. It is an independently produced film that explores the filmmaker’s personal links between the Caribbean and Cape Town. In the film Orderson travels to Barbados to the birthplace of his great-grandfather. I’ve seen it and can strongly recommend it. I just got notice that it is playing at the BFM International Film Festival in London this weekend.
If you’re there go see it.
Here’s the description:
South African filmmaker Kurt Orderson retraces the lost history of his great-grandfather, Joseph Orderson. He soon discovers that his great-grandfather did not come directly from West Africa as the family commonly believed, but rather from Barbados, as a descendant of emancipated slaves who had been brought to the island to work in the sugar cane plantations.
He also unearths his ancestor’s activist past: Joseph Orderson was part of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded by the great Marcus Garvey, father of contemporary Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism.
