A New York-based organisation, Women Make Movies, is seeking to produce a one-hour documentary detailing the little-known work of the Jamaican Mobile Cinema Unit (MCU), which started in the mid-1930s and which brought the silver screen to the farthest reaches of the island.

The film will be shot all over the island, on digital video and 16mm film, and set for production in April 2004.

The film will be comprised of rarely-seen archival footage - the films the Mobile Cinema Unit showed and later produced - photographs of the time, and interviews with locals, historians, and older Jamaicans who remember the early MCU and its legacy today.

The soundtrack will feature a number of early mento, ska and reggae recordings. The filmmakers, producer/director Tanya Elaine Hamilton, writer Michael Pollock, along with Dan Friedlaender [researcher/archivist] and Patrick Ruth, are currently in discussions with legendary reggae artiste Linton Kwesi Johnson to narrate the documentary.

The filmmakers plan to seek distribution through a number of sources, including POV and The Independent Lens at PBS and in outlets outside the American market - especially Jamaica, African television and film outlets and Europe (Channel 4, BBC, Arte, ZDF).

Also, the film will be entered in festivals in the US and abroad, such as Toronto International, Berlin, Sundance, Jamaica and Bombay.

And, upon completion, the documentary will be projected and shown in the communities where it was shot, to carry on and support the Mobile Cinema Units that remain.

Gone 'a Country is sponsored and underwritten by Women Make Movies (www.wmm.com), a New-York based organisation providing independent films with non-profit status.

Rootz Underground launch reggae rock debut

Up close with Lady Saw

Half Pint delivers a stress free ride