The Cinematheque

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

Ken Eisner, Georgia Straight

The rise, fall, and redemption of Black 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 explore the experiences of Black Canadians, was producer.

preceded by

Hardwood
Canada 2005
Hubert Davis
29 min. DCP

In this moving, Oscar-nominated documentary short, filmmaker Davis, the mixed-race son of a Vancouver woman and a Harlem Globetrotters basketball player, examines the complicated personal decisions made by his father that affected families in two countries.

“Two excellent films that address the Black experience in the Canadian and British Columbian sports world. Both contribute significantly to that elusive genre: ​‘creative documentary.’” Harry Killas