Contact: Jason Hughes at 608-363-2625 or hughesj@beloit.edu

“Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens” to screen at Beloit College

The Beloit College anthropology department will present Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens, a film on violence in Jamaica, on Tuesday, March 9, at 6 p.m., in Richardson Auditorium of Morse-Ingersoll Hall, on the Beloit College campus. This event is free and open to the public.

For most Americans, Jamaica conjures up images of pristine beach vacations with a pulsating reggae soundtrack. Tourists experience the island as time-out-of-time, but in real time, Jamaica is one of the most violent countries in the world with a per capita murder rate rivaled only by Columbia and South Africa.                                                   

Bad Friday chronicles the history of violence in Jamaica through the eyes of its most iconic community, Rastafarians. The film focuses on a community in western Jamaica that annually commemorates the Coral Gardens “incident,” a 1963 act of violence perpetrated against them by the Jamaican government.                                     

This film tells a local story that plays out on a global stage where nobody and nothing stands still. The complex circulations of family members, friends, drugs, weapons, ideas and activism unfold on transnational terrain, linking urban America to rural Jamaica. Bad Friday ultimately raises critical questions about what community and citizenship look like in the 21st century.

Information about this and other Beloit College events can be found online at www.beloit.edu.