By Martina Attille
I is a Long Memoried Woman, the 1983 collection of poems by Grace Nichols has been the inspiration of a new fifty-minute video, which goes by the same name. Financially assisted by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and directed by Frances-Ann Solomon, the video describes the feelings and sensations on landing in the Caribbean from Africa during slavery. The themes of Identity, History, Ritual and Symbolism, explore the legacies that belong to all Caribbean women who try to change the oppressive circumstances in which they find themselves.
The Beginning is the first section of the video. It opens with the visualization of One Continent/To Another, a sequence in which a vast experience of translucent pink cloth captures its unsuspecting victim, and transposes the African woman into captivity. The cloth is transformed into a pregnant womb; a woman struggles with the umbilical binding; back arched, head pulled back with labour she is born again into a landscape of pain, despair and humiliation.
This art documentary achieves a fluency of form and content through the seductive choreography of Greta Mendez who ?choreographed, and kept choreographing and would not stop choreographing." says Solomon. Colour, light, shadow, costume and make-up are all animated by extremely photogenic narrators and dancers, whose performances liberate the black woman from the frigidity of her brutal memories of abuse, reminding the viewer that, yes indeed, Once she too was woman / clad / in her loveliest woman / skin gleaming faintily / with oils, breasts nippling / the wind.
If Nichols' women testify survival and celebration, then the crafting of this new video poetry is reassurance that black women are still building to improve the quality of that survival in the pursuit of stylish productions. I Coming Back is another example of the dramatic minimalism of the dance moving through the haunting certainty of Nichols' word sorcery. Solomon came upon the idea for the video four years ago while browsing in a bookshop ?? vaguely thinking I liked poetry, because I find it visually evocative? the form was not a conscious decision but an instinctive response to the material. Intellectualizing came much later. Since finishing the video in fact."
The form draws from the West African tradition of storytelling through narration, music ? in this case composed and arranged by Dominique Le Gendre ? and dance. Linguistic expediency however, dictated a certain amount of conventional structuring. The insertion of static archival material, and the strangely intrusive appearance of the poet herself, reading from her book, contribute to the over labouring of the point and to a large extent serve to slow down the gathering momentum of the choreography. The welcome advantage of this sort of conventionality is that those not familiar with the context of the material, get an education that is not easy to come by, and gives the uninitiated a guide to understanding.
I Is a Long Memoried Woman was completed in August. There is also a radio version available for broadcast. Solomon summarizes her relationship to the video, ?I still feel it is a work in progress, I don't think I've got it right, yet. The radio programme is another expression of this movement, love. It continues to develop in my mind so we want to do it on the stage, it could be powerful as live performance, with lots of dancers and thunderous musical score."
The production of this video is technically a very good example of the insightful ways in which some Black women choose to tell again the horrors of slavery and the triumphs of survival, aware of the pleasure-dominated demands of our contemporary media environment. A young Black woman with styled hair, leather jacket and thick woolen jumper, walks towards and past our viewer's eye, smiling out of the frame. Though she walks silently and slowly in this busy London street, her presence is a reminder that the Black woman has arrived and for all of us, the journey continues, out of the shit and blood of our tainted memories.
For further information contact Yod Video Ltd. (0753651700)
