Black Mother (Khalik Allah, 2018): Jamaica

Reviewed by: Matthew Dagenais, AFI Film Festival, Hollywood, CA

Black Mother; a documentary about Jamaica, its land, its people and its culture. Filmed, created and narrated by Khalik Allah this film covers so many aspects of Jamaican lifestyle that many other documentary’s about Jamaica do not.  Mr. Allah was there to present his film and he said that he really wanted to present the image of Jamaica that most documentary miss because they focus so much on the religion of Rastafarianism.

The entire film is shot with a little video camera that Allah had been taking shots with since he was a little boy living in Jamaica.  So the timeline of events is not linear at all in the film but it really didn’t need to be. The film audio is a bunch of different interviews that Khalik had recorded with his family and random individuals along his journey and Mr. Khalik did something I personally have never seen before. He made the audio in his film not line up with the visuals on screen so rather than an interview you were getting a painted story of the ideas presented by the voice talking at the time.  It was truly an incredible experience as you did not have to do much work at all as the images on the screen really painted the ideas of the voices telling stories.

The ideas of healthy living, happiness, simplicity, tough times and poverty are strongly presented the film.  The overall idea of the “Black Mother” a Jamaican mom was intensely intriguing.  The Jamaican people describe their women as the strongest women on the planet because they work so hard everyday, with such little tools, little money and little resources and yet they are all very strong, healthy, live long, and most importantly they are all so happy and grateful for their lives. They describe the American women as “overprivileged” and therefore are not as happy in their lifestyles.

The use of Achapelo song is used a few times and was very powerful in my mind, it was always a women singing and it was just so beautiful.  The fact that a song with no beat or instrumental music could sound the way it did in this film, along with the visuals that followed were truly powerful in making that statement of how strong the people of Jamaica are.

Khalik Allah broke this film up into three trimesters, the first struggles/problems which entailed some of the major issues in Jamaica such a prostitution and theft. The second, way of life which covered a lot more than just the marijuana and Rastafarian religion of the Jamaican people, it showed aspects of their everyday lives such as getting water, growing fruits and vegetables, washing their clothes by hand, and the communities and economy that has developed around different parts of Jamaica.  The third trimester was titled family and culture and entailed a long interview with Khalik’s Uncle where he told many stories of Jamaican history and the culture of their simple people compared to the cultures of Americans.  These trimesters as Khalik referred to them, were transitioned through a fading out shot that would blur up and spots of colour would fade in and out of the screen with an achapelo song being sung in the background by one of the Jamaican mothers and the song lyrics would relate directly to the trimester that had just happened it was truly powerful and wildly entertaining.