Really? And what nation is that?

For at least five decades, from the 1930s to the 70s, the cinema was a convention, a value, a form of creative public entertainment which constructively focused and questioned the minds of citizens in British Guiana, and Guyana up to at least 12 years after its Independence in 1966.

But first of all a definition of the term “cinema” should be agreed upon. The word “cinema” is used here to mean much more than any film being available for public or private viewing.

Cinema here means: (1) any sort of architectural structure, or enclosed gathering capable of seating 100 persons and up, at every screening of a film.

(2) It also means films which are more Art than Science, in other words films that focus on humans and the world they inhabit and share, rather than those which are mainly scientific tricks that simply dazzle our eyes with supernatural appearances and explosive dangers.

The idea of both cinemas and films has always been, and remains, almost entirely an imported utility in colonial and independent Guyana. Every Guyanese knows they need imports to enjoy life to some extent, but imports are not good simply because they are imports. That means that during all those decades when imported films were shown daily in Guyanese cinemas, if those films were bad or harmful to local audiences, in the same way that bad food poisons, then Guyanese society during those decades would have been atrocious in many aspects, such as morality, crime, uneducation, unemployment, starvation, and corruption.

If we assume that films and cinema-going had an effect on Guyanese society, and it most certainly did, then that effect had to be either good or bad.

In fact, in comparison to those decades when cinema was a cornerstone in Guyanese life, today’s local society appears far more atrocious in all those aspects listed above. We must not dismiss this point with the excuse that the whole world is atrocious today.

The attitudes, opinions and behaviour of people change under the influences they constantly receive. Life is as simple, or complex as that.

It would be naïve to think that in foreign North America, Europe, or India, where most of the films we see originate, their producers, writers, directors, actors and actresses were particularly concerned with helping or influencing Guyanese to be better people. They were probably thinking of themselves, and trying to solve their own social and personal problems.

Yet, and this is the magical logic of cinema as art, the emotional and intellectual content and style of good films focused on the general idea of what it meant to be truly human, truly civilised, truly just; and this human result via Art travelled well and felt right at home among Guyanese who paid attention to cinema. This occurred precisely because there could be no mistaking the emotional and intellectual effect of human behaviour made visually sharp and focused in thousands, millions of scenes, in an endless supply of old and recent films shown repeatedly in a variety of Guyanese cinemas in communities right across Guyana.

Eventually, producers and directors of Hollywood films did begin to consciously make films of relevance to areas of the world colonised by Europeans, particularly English-speaking areas. This occurred just before the Second World War began in 1939, and gained momentum right up to the 1960s.

One important practical reason for this was because both film production and distribution had been disrupted severely by Nazi bombing of film studios and cinemas across Europe during the war, and Hollywood experienced a sharp slump in film revenues between 1939 and ’49.

Anglo-Caribbean colonies, with large literate populations even then, did not suffer such attacks during the war, so their cinemas were quite intact, and their popularity increasing.

Interestingly British Guiana, though with a far less population than many Caribbean islands, nevertheless had more cinemas, because its sea coast where most people lived, was many times the size of any Anglo-Caribbean island, and therefore there was an enormous amount of space occupied by village communities where public cinemas provided a central stabilising influence on the development of a civilised conscience in the most simple country folk, moulding their emotions and intellectual development away from crude and ignorant modes of behaviour, and introducing a more self-conscious, ambitious mental attitude.

The intellectual activities of reading, comprehension, and the viewing of high-quality films, became a major value in the lives of Guyanese during the 20th century. This was a civilised development which led to Guyana becoming a nation/state democracy from its origin as a mere colonial possession.

Modern nation/state democracies are based on literacy, a tradition that goes all the way back to ancient democratic Greece. Once Guyanese learned the language of the coloniser, whether English, French, Dutch, or Spanish, the door was left wide open for reasonable and logical critical opinions on the human condition to also influence the minds of the colonised, since Western European democratic traditions do not produce one-dimensional totalitarian, or racist viewpoints shared by all their citizens, especially intellectuals and artists, as though they were sheep.

For this reason numerous films of the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s from both Hollywood and Europe, and the literature they were often based on, came to be an intrinsic part of Guyanese social values and everyday lifestyle.

Consuming literature and films of quality in English (or with English translations), therefore forced modern Guyanese of the 20th century to decide once and for all whether they were part of the Western democratic critical tradition which upheld intellectual and creative freedom rather than political and religious dogmas, or whether they would revert back in the post-colonial era to various idealised non-Western ethnic cultural traditions, or customs, that had survived in an insular fragmented provincial fashion far away from their original mother countries.

Of course, many of these original non-Western cultures had profound wisdom and religious ideas expressed in fables, parables, etc. However, these cultural avatars were now existing in a new evolving situation of social life among others of different race, religion, customs, etc, in the New World of South American Guyana. In a truly free democratic society nothing would stand in the way of a new cosmopolitan society emerging from such cultural diversity.

It is in this social aspect that the cinema and the cosmopolitan films of Hollywood showed a pleasant social influence on Guyanese social stability, both in the colonial and post-colonial eras.

ONE of the most amazing aspects of Guyana’s Anglo-colonisation built on multi-racial collective labour: from market porters, canecutters, stevedores, street cleaners, vendors, policemen and women, teachers, civil servants, etc, was the desire to see the results of their labour create a society and nation they could all be proud of, and enjoy.

Guyanese labour with centuries of history was not only beneficial to the coloniser and his overseas European homelands, but to the pleasant everyday experiences of life right here, in BG and Independent Guyana. To believe otherwise would be to encourage both disregard and disrespect for the labour, sacrifices, and achievements of all our local ancestors.

The cinema in Guyana and a majority of films seen here prior to the 1980’s, became an ideal theatre which questioned and practically inspired Guyanese audiences towards pride and joy in their lives. The cinema challenged Guyanese to either believe in the possibilities of a society built on the best ideals acted out for them on screen, or simply to ignore the numerous positive and collective influences they were exposed to on screen.

Only the most nihilistic, disinterested viewers, failed to see the opportunities of ideal social influences being demonstrated for them on screen. On a practical daily level Guyanese cinemas were the only public buildings where citizens of all races, classes, and religions, were integrated before stories, dramas, songs and dances, comedies etc, which did not divide them with opinions on local issues, but instead provided them with sympathetic and humane symbolic solutions to both personal and social problems.

No other collective gathering space, neither churches, temples, mosques, political, or governmental buildings offered such a level microcosm of national unity. Of course patrons had diverse opinions on what was shown on movie screens, but the emotional and imaginative form and content of films pushed viewers beyond their real conflicts in everyday life towards an ideal creative zone which offered processes of thoughtful, careful reflection. Evidence in the Guyanese press extending far back into the early 20th century prove that the convention of ‘cinema’ had become a serious cornerstone influencing the social stability and idealism of the growing nation.

To get a closer look at how Guyanese cinemas functioned socially we can start by considering “Olympic”, which once stood on Lombard Street, close to where Laparkan’s bonds stand today. Apparently Olympic’s front containing its screen on the west side of Lombard Street, faced the street, so that one walked into the cinema’s compound and towards the Demerara River and wharves where barges, launches, schooners, and ships were docked.

This placing of a cinema in the heart of the waterfront district on a rutted but wonderful commercial street, famous at that time for its wooden stores stacked with the fragrance of imported cloths, shoes, perfumes, hats, etc, hardware and grocery shops, rum saloons and restaurants, very much like a pioneer town in the American West, meant that an immediate audience was drawn from the labouring and commercial strata of society in their hours of freedom.

Sometimes these audiences were even lucky enough to see some of the very stars of the movies casually sitting on a barge docked right there on the Demerara River beside the cinema’s entrances.

This occurred with Annabella, the beautiful French film star and wife of the adored Hollywood actor Tyrone Power, who had recently co-starred with him in ‘Suez’ of 1938. Annabella had come to BG by ship from nearby Rio de Janeiro, and an early 1940’s photo in The Daily Chronicle shows her basking in bright Georgetown sunlight on a barge moored beside the Olympic cinema being interviewed by a young bespectacled Afro-Guyanese reporter and photographer, both dressed in white cotton suits fashionable at that time.

A point to take note of is that we are speaking of an idealistic 20th century era when many Hollywood films like `Suez’ were not simply action or adventure films, but constructive inspirational stories of very real historical efforts to develop the social, economic and geographical potential of tropical areas affected, good and bad, by Western colonialism.

Another similar film which suited Olympic audiences was “Only Angels Have Wings” of 1939, which starred Gary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Rita Hayworth and directed by Howard Hawks. This classic film, regarded highly today, shows us the courageous personal and social lives of pilots who opened rapid communication lines between the world and South America in the 1930’s, facing natural dangers in their effort to establish vital means to the goal of social and economic development in remote isolated nations, which to this day depend heavily on air traffic, skillful pilots, control tower personnel, and ground staff, to function effectively.

Films like these inspired Guyanese labourers, merchants, professionals, etc, in a positive way, showing their interdependence as a people heeding constructive social ambitions to build a nation and society of their own. Those local audiences who poured into Lombard Street after the screening of such films saw scenes that were almost identical to the rugged tropical pioneer atmosphere they had just digested on Olympic’s screen.

However, in the heat of post-colonial rhetoric of later decades, a new simple-minded belief that Independence meant removing the ideas of many imported cultural products, saw such products like classic Hollywood films vetoed by local plays, TV programmes, etc. whose main worth seemed based on non-white casts, creole dialogue and narrative, and stories that did little more than reflect or imitate the popular behaviour patterns and melodramatic antics of local citizens.

But the reason why a quantity of classic Hollywood and European imported films remained more beneficial on the whole to Guyanese is because such films were filled with social idealism filtered through the harsh realities that labourers, professionals, entrepreneurs, etc, experience on the road to development in industrial metropolitan societies. Such societies already had the advantage of social development begun long before Guyana’s, and therefore their cultural items such as classic films also had the advantage of social wisdom gained from reflecting on such harsh experiences modern societies encounter on their road to development.

It was pointless and naïve for Guyanese to ignore such foreign cultural experiences; unless they believed that North America and Europe had no workers, poor people, classes, discriminated races, etc?

Such a service of social reflection and idealism provided by classic Hollywood and European cinema to Guyanese audiences, was therefore not a defect in our nationalism, or a sign of leftover colonial dependence, but an asset to Guyana’s human, and eventual economic development.

HOW does the cinema’s role in social development function in a Guyanese context? The first necessity which established the possibility of Guyanese social development was the common goal of literacy in the English language. Without an agreement on a common value, such as efficiency in a specific language used by all Guyanese, no shared common logic in communication would exist to promote agreement and peaceful co-existence among Guyanese. Skilled literacy in English therefore opened the doors to comprehension and participation in literature, music, films available in that language. This shared language among all Guyanese led to a secure pride in their everyday lives, in the capital city and communities and villages that had traditionally sprung up around sugar estates, rice mills, agricultural farms, and mining towns. Pride in both the colony of BG, and independent Guyana, was sustained because those who felt this were able to see their nation glorified daily on postage stamps which depicted every local industry, every race; newspapers and radio programmes also fed the optimism of literacy. Literacy in English became the foremost guide which bound labourer, professional, merchant, civil servant together in the enterprise of Guyanese social stability and development since over a century ago in the colonial era. Indeed, it was during the colonial era of BG that one of the most precious Guyanese songs in English emerged to inspire and guide young Guyanese with these words: “Onward, upward may we every go, day by day may strength and beauty grow.”

It was the cinema that continued and developed the education of ambitious Guyanese in their hours of freedom from work. Classic films taught Guyanese how to separate the function of the roles they saw on screen, from the race and nationality of the foreign actor who acted them out, and thereby grasp what was helpful to them by identification only with the role. The role acted as a bridge between the optimistic desires of the audience and an optimistic real life after absorbing the film. Even when local cinema viewers were faced with films in which members of their race were portrayed in menial jobs or low social positions, they were nevertheless only spectators able to decide what benefits for them were implied by the scene. For example in several of Frank Capra’s socially inspiring black and white films, such as “It happened one night”, “Mr Smith goes to Washington”, “It’s a wonderful life”, and others, coloured people are shown in small jobs as baggage handlers, household servants, railway stewards, etc, as indeed many were in the 1930’s when these films were made. However, to coloured Guyanese viewing such films in BG, or even today, to identify with the functions of such jobs was in no way demeaning, lacking in self-respect or self-pride, or impractical, since for those who occupied tenement yards or humble lodgings such jobs which entailed helping others, cooking and cleaning skills, or nannying, were an asset to their lives, and a vital necessity in Guyanese society, where to this day at local airports, hotels, affluent households, restaurants, etc, such jobs remain in demand and are an absolute necessity which no honest social revolution could define as an unfortunate eyesore of “poverty”, since the holders of such jobs are not lesser humans because of them, nor are they people condemned to social stagnation.

On the other hand, among local cinema audiences viewing such films, were non-white Guyanese who did not identify at all with the porters, servants, nannies, etc, of their own race who they saw in such roles, but instead with the white actor or actress in the role of engineer, such as Tyrone Power in “Suez”, or aircraft pilot, such as Gary Grant in “Only Angels Have Wings”, or idealistic reporter, such as Clark Gable in “It Happened One Night”, or Barbara Stanwysk in “Meet John Doe”, or even the simple girl who believes in love and choosing her own lover, rather than having one chosen by her family, such as Donna Reed in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Male and female non-white Guyanese who identified with such white actors in such roles were not expressing a desire “to be white”, but a shared ambitious belief in the function of such roles, which held out hope for simply an optimistic life based on honest work, dedication, social freedom, and an educated type of morality.

Similarly, the 1950’s Rogers & Hammerstein’s Technicolor musical “Oklahoma”, a truly entertaining classic Hollywood film with a story of simple outdoor life and personal ups and downs in the American frontier, or West, became extremely popular among Guyanese in the 1950’s and 60’s. When we look at this film’s clean bright rural scenes and listen to its songs which express sheer exhilaration at everyday life, we understand why such Hollywood old films are an asset to Guyanese social stability. One particular scene in the film became unforgettable for Guyanese of that era: Early one morning the White Cowboy, acted by Gordon McRae, rides his horse very slowly across the fresh countryside looking at nature’s gifts: the earth, the trees, the sky, the birds, the streams, etc, as he sings: “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way.” This song and these words come to be heard frequently from the galvanised bathrooms in poor yards, and average households, as Guyanese of any race poured water over their heads or stood beneath a shower, before leaving for whatever ups and downs their day ahead held. This scene and song has even more precious significance for all human life today threatened by conflicts involving nuclear warheads which would damage the natural life of the planet totally.

When today’s young generation of Guyanese hear about older local generations with less hostile and socially dangerous attitudes, or behaviour patterns, it is really the beneficial social effect of such classic cinema which subtly shaped and guided the lives of citizens in past decades. But before anyone believes that simply urging a return to cinema attendance of today’s films would remedy or reverse this sad situation, they are wrong. It can never be overstressed that such a Golden Era of Cinema was based on the quality of films made and constantly shown back then, and until the totally idiotic local opinion that Hollywood films in black and white and colour made since the 1930’s are old outdated irrelevant films is given up entirely, there can never be much hope of cinema once again influencing Guyanese social stability. The history of cinema is not a passing fashion or trend, but actually a record of our success and failure at being truly human.

IT IS quite rewarding and useful to take a closer look at a few specific classic films from the history of cinema, to see what permanent lessons they hold for the Guyanese masses.

In the 1950’s decolonisation changes were spreading like wildfire across tropical nations that had endured various European colonisations for centuries. The diverse abuses and injustices of these colonisations are familiar by now, and involve geographic explorations, plantation slavery, invasion, indentured servitude, racism, economic exploitation, etc.

Indeed the very idea of “progress”, or the modern world with all its comforts, was paradoxically built on such a global history of cruel economic ambitions among all races on all continents.

We are now left to ask ourselves, what does such a complex road to progress mean? And specifically, will the struggle for freedom from European imperialism, colonialism, and exploitation, end with better post-colonial nations, with little or no economic exploitation of one race by another, one class by another, little or no injustice, racism, or freedom to think and express oneself without fear?

While many political governments of decolonised nations behaved as though their anti-colonial struggles and eventual national independence naturally ushered in some sort of Utopian era, free of exploitation, social revenge, injustice, and various bigotries, which seemed to be invented by white imperialism, artists with no political agenda from many nations knew that human change was not as simple as that.

Concerned with the human condition, the human mind, and human actions, artists world-wide, especially those involved in literature and film-making, which are closely linked, have consistently tried to show various ways out of this dilemma of repeating the same human mistakes, misunderstandings, and eventual tragedies which result from naïve and shallow beliefs in the evil of one race and the natural goodness of another, the evil of one system of religions and politics, and the natural goodness of another.

“Something Of Value” is a 1957 Hollywood film which digs deeply into the human condition under colonialism in the Anglo African colony of 1950’s Kenya, and the famous Mau-Mau tribal rebellion which emerged there. The film became a major interest to Guyanese of the 1950’s & 60’s, when it was often shown in local cinemas, because Guyana’s local history of European colonisation could easily be seen in a stereotypical fashion which lumped it hastily with Anglo Colonisation in Africa, India, Asia, etc.

What the film does in a very realistic style is show us how obsessions of racial power produce rivalries and national instabilities which lead to the total collapse of human progress.

Rock Hudson as the white colonial settler in Kenya and Sidney Poitier as his childhood African friend, obviously less Westernised, in two of their best performances, see their individuality and friendship come apart in the social and racial turmoil that erupts, forcing them to take the side of their race in a conflict they did not start, but which affects them.

Richard Brooks, the film’s Director, and one of Hollywood’s best, was often seen as too honest by US authorities, to the extent that one US diplomat in Italy objected to his film “Blackboard Jungle”, again with Poitier, being shown at the Venice Film Festival.

In “Something Of Value” the boyhood and adult friendship of Hudson and Poitier is almost destroyed by the collective racism of Hudson’s white colonial society, and Poitier’s retaliating collective tribal family and race.

It is this precious friendship of Hudson and Poitier, and their equal love for Africa, the homeland they share, which is the “something of value” this brilliant unforgettable film preserves right down to the present where, the same conflicts and their origins continue to haunt many post-colonial nations.

“Something Of Value”, (tritely renamed “Africa Ablase” later, and rarely seen) is a film which cautioned generations of Guyanese to think for themselves and avoid following irrational ideas and attitudes like mindless sheep. So popular was this film that its name became the title of one of young Guyanese Pop singer, Mark Holder, most popular songs.

In the midst of Guyanese pre-Independence turmoil of the early 1960’s, two powerful Hollywood films: “The Ugly American” (1962), and “The 7th Dawn” (1964) focused on the dilemma of post-colonial nations whose anti-colonial mass movements are pushed to violent extremes by a handful of individual members.

The locations in both films are South Asian regions like Burma, Malaysia, but their example spoke for other ex-European colonies in the tropics. What these films focused on was a familiar development where local political leaders who once fought on the side of Allied Nations against Japanese invasions in the 2nd World War, or studied in Western or Soviet Universities before returning home to lead, gradually became the foes of their former Western educators and colleagues.

In “The Ugly American” Marlon Brando is quite interesting as the US Diplomat who is convinced his old Asian friend who studied with him at University is not the inhumane man and threat to regional Democracy and US policies his State employers make him out to be.

But when Brando arrives in the Asian nation he finds that his friend has little power to change or control the inner political rivalries in his Party, or curb the violent methods it has spawned. Hence the title “The Ugly American”, which hints at the early stages of a new anti-Americanism in several non-Western nations which wanted no outside, or external interference in their internal, or regional political ambitions.

This criticism by such Hollywood films of both American naivety in assessing the problems of foreign nations, and the authoritarian social and cultural habits of another culture, for example the zealous almost religious worship of the young Asian political leader by his people in “The Ugly American”, is what makes such Hollywood films serious works of art concerned with the human condition, and therefore relevant both in the past and present to those Guyanese interested in the roots of social problems spanning the developing and developed nations; problems which remain despite today’s global economy and technology, or perhaps even because of them.

It is a naïve illusion to think films like these mentioned here are old, irrelevant, sensational Hollywood propaganda films with no lessons of importance for today’s generations worldwide.

“THE Seventh Dawn” of 1964 remains an exceptional, very perceptive film which basically explores three important social points:- (1) The shift from being a Colonial ally of the Allied Forces during the Second World War, to an anti-colonial stance in the quest for Independence; (2) The beginnings of serious disruptive social violence justified by the rhetoric of political aspirants; (3) The special example of foreign individuals with neutral positions in local politics and an interest in the development of local industries, as well as a love for the simple pleasures of everyday life in tropical countries.

William Holden plays such an interesting American foreigner in this film, set in Burma, a British colony approaching self-rule during the 1960’s. Holden is liked by locals because he mixes freely, but also because he was an old friend of a young political foe of British colonialism in Burma since back when they fought Japanese invaders in World War 2. They also share love of a beautiful Eurasian girl, played memorably by Capucine the beautiful hybrid French actress of the 1960’s, who also fought on the Allied side in Burma during the Second World War. While Holden’s radical friend plots attacks on other “white Imperialists”, he is spared, not only because of old ties, but because as an American with an anti-colonial origin and love for the Bill of Rights, etc, he is not fond of any Imperialisms, and leans towards neutrality. However, their old friendship reaches breaking point when the young local revolutionary kidnaps the daughter of the new British Governor, played delightfully by Susannah York, and holds her as a bargaining ploy with the British regime. Holden as a single aging Playboy at first discourages the zesty sensual advances of York, but gently gives in to her because her apolitical fun-loving attitude is similar to his. He finds her kidnapping unjustified because of her harmless innocence, and sets off into the jungle to reason with his old friend and secure her safety. Though he almost succeeds, the political and violent obsessions of his Burmese friend are too far gone, and he pretends to change while plotting Holden’s demise, but is shot by the young girl who saves Holden in the end.

“The Seventh Dawn” is not a film that answers problems in a typical resolved fashion, but more importantly it is a film which shows us the stubborn character faults within both coloniser and colonised, which can end in social instability for the entire local society. Its central value lies in showing how Holden’s unconventional individual attitude by remaining neutral in the midst of social conflicts, is able to see clearly both the good and the bad of the two opposing sides. It is precisely this strategic creative position of such films, novels, poems, plays, songs etc, which cause them to be given simple-minded hackneyed labels like “bourgeois” or “westernised”, etc, by those who seek to contaminate creative freedom with easy either/or, black/white divisions and demands that indoctrinate. In an interesting scene, the new British Governor of the colony, more reasonable and thoughtful than the outgoing one, admits to Holden that since Britain had already intended Independence for the colony, he could not understand the value of violent social methods to obtain it. This is a precious point which subtly alerts us to the origins of much post-colonial social instability, whether from politics, race, or crime, which continue in many Independent ex-colonies in the tropics today. If colonial disturbances were only the response to Colonial domination, how is it that after self-rule is attained such disturbances often continue, and even escalate despite economic self-rule?

Films like these helped Guyanese cinema audiences of the past to reflect more on the value of individual attitude which refused to be blinded by collective pressures. Holden was one of the Hollywood actors who left us some of the finest roles of human strength, courage, devotion, independent thought, and bohemian pleasures, a man who upheld some of the best qualities of North American individualism. Films such as “The Seventh Dawn”, “Something of Value” and “The Ugly American” often received deliberately ridiculing reviews printed in US Newspapers and Entertainment Tabloids which reduced such daring films to mere action or adventure “flicks” of old 1930’s and 40’s decades, a time, in fact, when American films were far too serious socially for hum-drum critics. Similar critics had no clue about the real truth behind new films like “The Ugly American”, “The Seventh Dawn”, “Something of Value” and others of a similar nature, because unlike the writers, director, and cast who committed themselves to making such films and paid attention to what was going on in such developing countries which they filmed in, these fickle reviewers paid little indepth attention to such “backwater” countries, and knew hardly anything about social changes occurring there. Due to such half-cooked reviews, films like these made by brilliant Hollywood studios like United Artists, fell into oblivion.

Such films, however, were shown many times in various Guyanese cinemas in the 50’s and 60’s, exposing Guyanese to intelligent, pertinent social dramas which coincided with similar upheavals which were fomenting and beginning to tear their own nation apart. The films themselves could not prevent or stop such upheavals which were the innuendoes of colonial history, and the agenda of local politicians. What social effect did such films have then? What public benefit did they serve? We can safely assume that both a positive and beneficial effect registered on Guyanese who had the potential to be less impulsive, more rational and open-minded; while others who feared such effects would undermine their social and political agendas, welcomed the dismissal and ridicule of such films, so that their own local ideological viewpoints and social tactics could command the complete attention of citizens. By the end of the 1970’s several bureaucratic changes came to affect the economic process of film importation via the once hectic business of Hollywood Film Depots in Georgetown. The eventual closing of such wonderfully exciting and extremely helpful Hollywood and European Film Depots, stacked with a steady supply of all the old classic films and more recent films, is what resulted in the sudden dullness and unimportance of cinemas in Guyana, which contributed to their disuse, the privatisation of Film Culture by the introduction and excessive reliance on TV and rented home videos, leading to the almost complete collapse of the cinema industry which exists in Guyana today.

WHEN Guyanese, both in and out of Georgetown, lost the social custom of attending matinees and night shows offering more than one hundred old and new films per week, they also lost at least sixty per cent of their social pleasure, and educational stimulus. Home viewing of TV, DVDs, etc, could not replace this loss, because the great films previously seen were either absent or unknown. The excitement of cinemas could not be replaced by personal viewing, which reduced films to trivial personal toys, also increasing one’s electricity bill at home, and isolated citizens from the collective learning cinemas offered.

The effect of this loss also came to be felt later in the society when cinemas were no longer there to curb idleness on a daily basis, or force people to organise their hours of freedom and work more seriously. The result was a new trend of seemingly endless social lawlessness since the 1980’s, which also proved that all the political organising, protests, demands for anti-colonial self-rule, etc, did not result in a less violent and disruptive society than previous decades, but an even more disruptive and violent one, despite the absence of a foreign colonial regime. Could it be then that there were several local beliefs, opinions, attitudes, other than those blamable on our colonial heritage., which we did not heed or criticise in ourselves, and which therefore persisted unchecked, resulting in the numerous violent and crude social problems Guyanese society suffers from today?

Certain films, other than political or ideological ones, answered this local question in the past, and can answer it also today, because of the psychological and cultural relevance of their topics. One such film is `The Unforgiven’, of 1959, a beautiful wide-screen, technicolour, undisputed masterpiece from United Artists Studios, starring Audrey Hepburn, Burt Lancaster, Audie Murphy, and John Saxon. When this film opened at Georgetown’s Plaza Cinema in 1960, a shocking story of local relevance and implication captured the attention of thousands over a few weeks. The film was clearly recognised by the intelligent management and staff of Plaza as something to be given the highest publicity, and two gigantic colourful dramatic posters were placed on tall poster boards facing east and west above Plaza’s marquee. Briefly described, the film concerns the sudden eruption of racial bigotry and violence when Audrey Hepburn, part of a white pioneer family comprised of two valiant brothers, Burt Lancaster and Audie Murphy, is discovered to be not white at all but an Indian girl, part of the Kiowa Tribe in the western wilderness where white pioneer families reside. The girl was rescued as a child by Lancaster’s and Murphy’s mother after her village was destroyed by pioneers, and brought up to think she was the blood relative of Lancaster and Murphy, who thought the same as well. When the Native tribe discovers she is one of them, they demand her return, but her “mother” does not reveal her true racial identity, and Lancaster, Murphy and their mother defend her as one of them against the tribe’s violent attacks after they fail to secure her return through their custom of barter. When Hepburn’s true racial identity is finally revealed by their dying mother, Lancaster and Murphy must face their own racial obsession with wanting to be a family of one blood and culture, with no desire to mix racially or socially with other races and other cultures.

`The Unforgiven’ revealed for Guyanese cinema audiences of the early 60’s, at the exact time when racial and social problems were rising, several truthful problems which lay embedded in their beliefs and attitudes. Problems which did not vanish with the change from being a `British Colony’ to that of `Independent Nation’. Problems that only a deep radical change in how they viewed each other, could solve. Though the film could not prevent much of the racial violence that occurred in that decade, it did have the power to show individuals who paid attention to it, how absurd many of man’s racial obsessions were, and how they can only save themselves, as individuals from such pitfalls. Individuals, however, also make up groups, so individual change is not insignificant. The brilliance of this film is that it refused to take sides, by showing the Indians as bad and the whites as good. Both sides are guilty of the same racial obsessions, based on claiming, or reclaiming someone seen only as part of a racial and cultural group, never as simply a free human being, able to adapt to new human environments, and develop or grow according to the human love and kindness it receives. So brilliant is this film that director John Huston shows us one scene where even cultural expressions become agents of war between the two racial foes, whites and Indians. When the Kiowa Indians begin to play their music as night falls, Lancaster sees it as a threat, a form of magical witchcraft, and orders his mother to play European music on the piano he brought back as a gift from his travels to big cities. One kind of music represents non-Western culture, the other Western culture, and the two styles in their ethnic solitudes represent each race and culture in a stagnant confrontation within the geographical space they share. In today’s modern cultures, however, such an immature state of cultural confrontation has been succeeded by cultural styles of music, such as Jazz, Rock, and all sorts of Pop, which are a beautiful blend of old ethnic cultural styles, and this new creative fusion is precisely what is meant by American, or any form of “modern” culture, as opposed to other distinctly mono-cultural traditions nurtured in isolation, which affected the entire earth in its early stages of development.

This same cultural fusion of original cultural forms or styles is visible in numerous films, literature, painting, sculpture, fashion, etc. Those who consume or accept such cultural styles, therefore participate as individuals or groups in unified expressions of such national cultures that do not encourage the persistence of social problems spawned by original ethnic diversity. A film such as `The Unforgiven’ remains one acutely relevant cinematic example of immature, or stagnant social and cultural values, which in multi-racial societies such as Guyana’s can lead to endless social conflicts, and the impossibility of ever creating a national culture where such problems are largely defused and resolved by the contribution of artists, and the Arts in general.

NATIONS that show strong social stability and economic development usually contain a population whose mental health is in good shape. Without this vital ingredient of well developed minds, the overall economic and peaceful aspirations of citizens, despite various forms of international foreign aid, can easily result in little lasting progress or local contentment.

The consumption of proper films, literature, music and art, is not an activity separate or disconnected from the achievement of social stability and economic development. But how do we recognise proper films, literature, music, art that encourage mental strength and health, without being like lectures or sermons in a didactic and dogmatic manner?

As already stated, the first necessity before proper films, literature, music and art can even be desired by children, teenagers, young and mature adults, is proper literacy. Without this ability to comprehend words, sentences, language in general, rather than misinterpret and misunderstood what one reads and hears, the benefits of such films, etc, would be lost. This is the reason why classic films of past decades, and only a select number of recent ones interest us here, because they force the mind to analyse, consider, reason, observe and listen carefully, rather than simply sit back and be thrilled by physical actions and spectacular technical displays.

Today, more and more serious Hollywood filmmakers struggle to make films of equal human and artistic value as past classic films, but many openly admit that recent films have been planned by huge financial corporations and accountants who use gullible patrons as guinea pigs to test the thrilling attraction of formula films. This is one major reason classic films with proven human and creative worth can still remain very attractive to populations that need to boost their mental health and strength, like Guyana’s, if they are given the chance to do so by constant daily exposure to such films, which is what cinema in BG and Guyana did in past decades.

The attraction, or rather returned attraction of such films (along with new ones of equal stature), will only occur if citizens accept and agree that exposure to such films is something always valuable and important. In that respect, essays such as these will hopefully help such a public consensus to be achieved. In a small country like Guyana, it is vital that such an acceptance is maintained in order for such film culture to create the desired effect of mental upliftment, via intellectual, emotional, and moral enquiry. This is so because of the multi-racial or diverse ethnic composition of the nation, which if left to ignore the value of cohesive cultural focus, could easily stagnate, valuing and heeding only their specific ethnic cultural expressions. For example: Orientals would look at and be interested only in Oriental films, music, dances, etc; Afro-Guyanese only at films, music, art, etc, about their own race; the same would apply to every other ethnic group who would feel no mental and social value existed in cultural expressions not related to their race and “original” culture. Such an attitude would spawn a heap of other human problems within Guyanese society, without them being noticed, since each group would simply feel they are expressing their natural freedom and rights.

This is the sort of underlying unstable mental atmosphere that offers no logical route out of the mundane economic and practical problems encountered nationally; indeed such a mental atmosphere can even aggravate and exaggerate the reasons for economic problems. The opposite to such a chronic mental malaise, often expressed in the insipid and bewildered state of those affected consciously or unconsciously, is not a barrage of one-dimensional robotic, heroic, propagandistic “socialist-realist” films for the population, but rather the constant public presence and knowledge of cultural forms and expressions of a modern contemporary nature.

What are these cultural forms, and how do we recognise them? First of all, the “modern” work of art does not accept any predictable or prescribed topic, opinion, or cultural value within its manifestation. Such works instead engage our curiosity and enquiry, they put our full human faculties to work, thereby exercising them, and therefore waking up our rational, or reasonable free-will, rather than indoctrinating us. This is why thousands of classic Hollywood and European films do not target or appeal to the specific ethnic, racial, or cultural values of Guyanese. Everyone enters the cinema and awaits such films for the first time without any fixed idea of the viewpoint, or prior cultural value-system, they will receive. Only the activities, the discussions, the scenes we see and hear, add up to a cultural experience, which is not known in advance. A film such as `Three colours: Red’, by the great Polish director Kieslowski, is a complete surprise from scene to scene, yet it adds up to a profound moral and beautifully sensitive statement, with nothing really to say about Polish, Swiss, or European culture. It is the film itself, which represents its culture. Similarly, who can say exactly what great classic modern films like `The Unforgiven’, `Giant’, `Something of value’, `Hud’ `Blow Up’, `La Dolce Vita’, etc, tell us at their end? But we can be sure our mental faculties in total were put in motion during the film, and continue after.

Such expressions of modern cultural freedom are not only imports for Guyanese. The same modern values exist in the nation’s greatest creative writers and painters, such as Mittelholtzer, Harris, Carter and Seymour, and abstract painters like Aubrey Williams and Cletus Henriques. To encourage growth and acceptance of local modern cultural values every literate Guyanese from high school student to adult citizen, should be exposed continually to a thorough experience of the works of these local writers and visual artists. The same unpredictable or surprising human values, arrived at through inventive narrative and dialogue structures in modern films, can be found in the narratives and dialogues of Mittelholzer novels like `The Kaywanna Trilogy’, `Sylvia’, `Thunder Returning’, `Latticed Echoes’, `Shadows move among them’ and `A morning at the office’. Wilson Harris novels like: `Palace of the Peacock’, `Eye of the Scarecrow’, `The Waiting Room’, `Heartland’, `The Secret Ladder’, `The Whole Armour’ and `Tumatumari’. However, readers, teachers, and reviewers of these local novels also need to heed their complete open-ended, open-minded vision, arrived at by a questioning, interrogative, and poetically descriptive literary style, if they are to grasp and participate in the modern cultural process and values such modern Guyanese works, like classic modern film experiences, also propose.

IT IS realistic to conclude that the possibility of achieving lasting social stability in Guyana remains hindered by the undeveloped mental attitudes, cultural insularity, and resentful behaviour patterns which pervade even many in positions of power to influence the creation of a stable modern Guyanese cultural vision.

For instance, teachers, journalists, religious followers, politicians, civil servants, business people, students, artists, writers, etc, who consider themselves “Guyanese”, may themselves be staunch upholders, believers, and defenders of insular ethnic values, usually misplaced under the heading: “Guyanese Culture”; when in fact these inherited values, mentally short-circuited and defined by already prescribed viewpoints, remain simply the various, or diverse ingredients of a nascent modern Guyanese culture still in the making.

Film classics, and their modern equivalents, especially from the democratic, free, artistic viewpoints of Hollywood and European studios, can play a vital role in the attainment of the goal of social stability in a Guyanese context. On the other hand, if insular inherited values continue to be seen by all the various national sectors mentioned above, as their self-satisfied right, such values will probably find ways to be sown or spread socially by them, thereby influencing chronic social instability, without even realising it.

However, those who believe that by simply embarking on a programme of “modernisation” of Guyanese media via the making of local films, TV programmes, internet information and instruction, computer transferral from the use of literary texts, etc, the results will automatically be better for the nation on the whole, are sadly mistaken. Why? Because involved in these areas, especially the young, may be mainly impressed simply with the technical medium or process now available to them, skipping the discipline of careful training in literacy, grammar, spelling, comprehension, that are vitally necessary before a competent transferral can be made to such mediums. Even more vital is the creative task of using these mediums with a context and form that helps in the creation of a socially stabilising modern cultural direction for the nation. The superficial and academic use of local film-making, TV or computer use, etc, therefore guarantees no change for the better (except perhaps in the creation of new jobs) in Guyanese society if they do not introduce new artistic forms and content which provide a new open-minded modern cultural direction for citizens to consider. It is here that the constant exposure to classic/modern films mentioned can provide useful cinematic education.

On the other hand it is quite obvious that the introduction of local TV programming, and filmmaking over recent decades has added to the rapid communication of misinformation, diverse bigotries, inflammable opinions, poor intellectual reasoning, trite “cultural” expressions, etc, which are made to sound and look more valid and important than they really are because of the audio-visual medium which broadcasts them, whereas in the past such local communications and expressions would receive little more than a passing roadside audience of curious spectators.

The drastic lessening of both the previous quantity of classic films chosen by serious and experienced cinema staff for local cinema audiences before the 1980’s, created an enormous vacuum or emptiness that did not exist before in the national consciousness. The damaging effect of this vacuum went by unnoticed for decades, because no one had pointed out that film or cinema was a serious art-form capable of human upliftment, civilising powers, and education that leads to social stability, not simply “entertainment”.

Many news reports in the world today have confirmed the ability of cinematic art for public audiences as vital to stabilised civilised values. What films can we cite to demonstrate this opinion? For starters, have a look at these profound classics made between 20 and 65 years ago, and available on video or DVD. `The Best Years of Our Lives’; `Pinky’; `Mrs Miniver’; `The World of Apu’; `On the Waterfront’; `Laura’; `Double Indemnity’; `Johnny Guitar’; `The Big Country’; `The Misfits’; `Out of Africa’; `The Sun also Rises’; `Network’; `Day for Night’; `Love Fields’; `Mo’ Better Blues’; `Diva’; `La Dolce Vita’ ….

It is fitting to close by discussing a 1960’s film quite relevant to attitudes and opinions that can have an effect on the present and future of local social proposals, and their economic repercussions. `Hud’ is such a film of the highest ratings, made in 1963, and starring Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal; directed by Martin Ritt, a Hollywood master of characterisation and the camerawork of James Wong Howe, the Chinese genius of B&W photography who came to Hollywood and proved the value of American cosmopolitanism.

`Hud’ opened at Plaza in 1964 doubled with `Law of the Lawless’, one of the last great Hollywood Westerns of the 1960’s, concerned with social and moral attitudes, starring Dale Robertson and Yvonne De Carlo. Over the weeks, this double played at Plaza, some patrons returned twice, thrice, haunted and fascinated by the acoustic guitar, the clean clear quiet scenes, open landscapes so similar to Guyana’s and the powerful climatic story of two people, father and son, young and old, with values that ask us to choose between right and wrong, in `Hud’.

Paul Newman acts as Hud, the callous son of modern rancher Melvyn Douglas, who has seen his son’s bad social habits lead to tragic results. Though Hud is selfish and egotistic, he is also fun to be with, humourous, and good company. But when the family’s herd of cattle probably has the dreaded foot-and-mouth disease, Hud prefers to sell it off to unsuspecting buyers before the health authorities destroy the cattle. Hud’s father condemns such a plan as lawless and unsocial, realising that Hud is eager to inherit the ranch so that he can prospect for oil, rather than continue the slow nurturing of agriculture which has shaped his father’s moral strength and sense of justness. What Hud really likes is the materialism of the industrial, technological world, like his fast car which he drives over the fragile kitchen garden, or women he can buy with gifts or money. What Hud likes is an easy way to make lots of money, and he tells his father that America was built on acts that broke the law, so he is simply doing what everyone with sense does.