Life and Debt

This impassioned polemical diatribe addresses the fate of the Jamaican economy. The island was freed from British colonialism in 1962, but since the oil crisis of the 1970s has been 'enslaved' and impoverished by the IMF and the World Bank. Jamaica Kincaid's book A Small Place (the title refers to her native Antigua) is used as a shaping narrative, extracts read in an angry tone by Belinda Becker. The film condemns the destructive effects of globalisation on Jamaica's industry and agriculture (onions, bananas and milk) and its culture in general, with particular reference to the so-called industrial 'free zones' set up by the US in Kingston to bypass import-export tariffs and normal tax legislation. Talking heads are intercut to synthesise theory and practice, but as an economic diatribe this is a bit patronising and not wholly persuasive.