CLIMATE CULTURES IN JAMAICA II
From Survival to Livity
Short film: "Plastic, pollution and survival strategies"
Director: Imani Tafari-Ama
The director in conversation with Esther Figuerao/ Jamaica
Languages: English, German
Rastafari created a Livity perspective as a decolonial counter discourse to Eurocentric norms, institutions and perspectives, characterised as Babylon. That is why Bob Marley explained in song, "Babylon system is a vampire, sucking the blood of the sufferahs!"
The Livity perspective anticipates the current discussion of climate justice, with its contradictions rooted in colonialism's destructive relationship to the environment. This peace and love platform proposes green solutions to the challenges faced by those excluded from equity and empowerment, in all walks of life. Livity validates spirituality and indigenous knowledges as fundamental for realising sustainable climate futures.
Imani Tafari-Ama explores Jamaican strategies for survival despite Babylonian garbage in her film on plastic, and discusses food security and reproduction relations in a sustainable climate future with Esther Figueroa. How does the connection between spiritual and material approaches work for a holistic life?
On the Podium
Esther Figueroa PhD, is a Jamaican independent filmmaker, writer, educator and linguist. Her activist filmmaking gives voice to those outside of mainstream media. In 2020, she founded “The Global Extraction Film” Festival, the first online film festival focused on global extraction. Her environmental novel “Limbo”, was a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards for Multi-cultural Fiction.
• 2014 Limbo. A Novel
• 2019 Fly Me to the Moon (114 min)
↗Esther Figueroa's YouTube channel
Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama, a Pan-Africanist and Womanist Scholar, is currently Research Fellow at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies. During 2016-17, she served as International Fellow and Curator at the Flensburg Maritime Museum, to participate in the year-long “Fellow Me! Mobile Academy” and curated the acclaimed “Rum, Sweat and Tears” exhibition as a critical response to Danish colonialism in the Virgin Islands. Flensburg was formerly Danish and therefore has a historical share in the Danish colonialism in the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.