August is the International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolotion is an international day celebrated August 23 of each year, the day designated by UNESCO to memorialize the transatlantic slave trade.
That date was chosen by the adoption of resolution 29 C/40 by the Organization’s General Conference at its 29th session. Circular CL/3494 of July 29, 1998, from the Director-General invited Ministers of Culture to promote the day. The date is significant because, during the night of August 22 to August 23, 1791, on the island of Saint Domingue (now known as Haiti), an uprising began which set forth events which were a major factor in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
Corra DEI council is thus sharing a documentary movie link (KUMINA QUEEN- https://vimeo.com/614792383) and will organize a chat over coffee session with the Maker of this documentary – NYASHA LAING. Nyasha is a documentarian who works to transform our understanding of diverse social and cultural movements and practices. Her independent storytelling – which has appeared in and on the Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival, BBC World Service, YES Magazine, The Art Museum of the Americas, IMZ International Festival & European Traveling Showcase – explores loss, regeneration, identity, and freedom.
In the wake of the loss of her mother, the filmmaker travels into the heart of Jamaican countryside to research kumina, an ancestral ritual. The ancient practice, she learns, is a driving force in Jamaica’s culture and identity, yet its leaders have historically been discarded as witches and criminalized. Jamaica’s post-colonial renaissance enabled Queenie to share her practice with the world. Today, artists and followers are reimagining kumina, even as the mysterious world of spirit possession reveals divergent pathways to freedom, healing, and transformation- for those who choose it.
In the words of Nyasha” Ancestral folk practices and the art forms they have spawned reveal people resisting in the most expansive sense of the word. They serve as vehicles to freedom and healing. They represent the absence of fear and shame, something we need more than ever today.”
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