THE Montego Bay Cultural Centre and National Gallery West are pleased to present the Montego Bay premier of the documentary film, The Price of Memory, on Saturday, October 18, starting at 7:00 pm.

Film-maker, Karen Marks Mafundikwa, will be in attendance, to introduce the film and to answer questions afterwards. The event is free to the public but donations are welcomed in support of the Montego Bay Cultural Centre programmes.

Filmed over the span of 11 years, The Price of Memory explores the legacy of slavery in the UK and Jamaica and the initiatives and debates surrounding reparations.

The film starts in 2002, with Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Jamaica as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations, when she is petitioned by a small group of Rastafari for slavery reparations. The film traces this petition and the first reparations lawsuit to be filed in Jamaica against the Queen, while interweaving stories of earlier Rastas who pursued reparations and repatriation in the 1960s.

The filmmaker travels to the UK, exploring the cities which grew wealthy from slavery and the British monarchy’s legacy of slavery, and follows the debates about reparations in both the Jamaican and British parliaments. The Price of Memory premiered at the 2014 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2014 Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival in late September.

The Jamaica premiere was at UWI-Mona on September 7 and received a standing ovation from the capacity audience. The October 18 screening of The Price of Memory is also the launch of the National Gallery West/Montego Bay Cultural Centre film programme.

Karen Marks Mafundikwe is a Jamaica filmmaker who from Montego Bay. 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.

Mafundikwa is also credited with the 2009 documentary feature, Shungu: The Resilience of a People, which won the Ousmane Sembene Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2010 and Best Documentary in the 2010 Kenya International Film Festival.