The Cinematheque

“Thoughtfully provocative … A smartly constructed, visually exciting doc.”

Ken Eisner, Georgia Straight

The rise, fall, and redemption of African-Canadian track legend Harry Jerome (1940−1982), a kid from North Vancouver who became the fastest man on the planet, is recounted in this artful documentary directed by noted Jamaican-Canadian filmmaker Charles Officer (Nurse.Fighter.Boy, Unarmed Verses). The film, shot in gorgeous black and white, employs archival footage, personal interviews, stylized re-enactments, and period music to tell Jerome’s remarkable story; it also examines how issues of race and the era’s civil rights movement played out in Jerome’s sometimes turbulent life. Vancouver-based Trinidadian-Canadian filmmaker Selwyn Jacob (The Road Taken), whose projects often explores the experiences of Black Canadians, was producer.

followed by

Hogan’s Alley
Canada 1994
Cornelia Wyngaarden, Andrea Fatona
32 min. DCP

Media artists Wyngaarden and Fatona’s 1994 video documents the previously untold history of Vancouver’s Black community, centering on the Strathcona neighbourhood of Hogan’s Alley from the 1930s until the late 1960s (when it was demolished to make way for the Georgia Viaduct), and examining the lives of three women.

Guests in attendance: Selwyn Jacob, Cornelia Wyngaarden