Life and Debt
Stephanie Black (Film producer, Film director), Belinda Becker (Narrator), Michael Manley, Stanley Fischer, Michael Witter, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, David H. Coore, Jerry J. Rawlings, Malik Sayeed, John Mullen (Editor of moving image work), Jamaica Kincaid, Tuff Gong Pictures (Production company), New Yorker Video (Firm) (Film distributor)
This documentary examines the effects of World Bank and the International Monetary Fund loans on the infrastructure Jamaica established in the wake of independence from the UK in 1962. Seven billion in debt (circa 2000), Jamaica has seen its agricultural industries laid to waste by the impossibility of competing with subsidized, multi-national American based companies. The poverty of an "average" Jamaican in a shantytown near Kingston is in stark contrast to the luxurious tropical fantasy paradise experienced by tourists in posh Montego Bay. In a dog-eat-dog global economy, the US and its multinational corporate clients have all the advantages, while Jamaica has no agriculture, no industry, and no tax base--only ever-growing debt
DVD Video, English, 2003
New Yorker Films Artwork, New York, NY, 2003