?Campus Film Classics is pleased to present as its screening for August 4, the film Rue Cases N�gres (Martinique/1983/103'/French and Creole with English subtitles), directed by Euzhan Palcy. The screening takes place in the first-floor auditorium, Centre for Language Learning, UWI main campus.
The screening is free and open to the public. Based on Joseph Zobel's coming-of-age novel, the story of Rue Cases N�gres (Black Shack Alley or Sugar Cane Alley in English) is told through the eyes of Jos�, a young boy growing up with his stern grandmother in the poverty of rural Martinique in the 1930s.
Jos� is friends with M�douze, an oldfield worker who tells Jos� stories of the past and of life in Africa. After M�douze's death, Jos� moves with his grandmother to Fort-de-France, where he is to take up a scholarship at a private school. Inspired by M�douze's tales, Jos� begins to write stories that are so accomplished that his teacher is convinced he has plagiarised them. Humiliated, Jos� runs away from school. When he returns home, however, he finds his grandmother has told his teacher all about M�douze's tales, and the teacher–now full of admiration for the young man–predicts that Jos� will become a great writer.
The debut film by Euzhan Palcy (who would go on to become the first black woman to direct a Hollywood feature, A Dry White Season, starring Marlon Brando), Rue Cases N�gres is a genuine classic of Caribbean cinema, a vivid and emotional portrait of the colonial society, and one boy's ability to go beyond the limitations of that society. The screening of Rue Cases N�gres will be introduced by Dr Christopher Meir, Lecturer in the Film Programme at UWI, and followed by a discussion.
