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Get Up ! Stand Up !
Le roman culte de l'auteur de The Harder They Come.
Un pays des Caraïbes, qui fait fortement penser à la Jamaïque. D'un côté, une caste privilégiée qui tient le gouvernement, l'armée, les médias, la justice et toutes les richesses locales, une élite corrompue, qui oscille entre volonté d'indépendance et soumission aux riches investisseurs étrangers. De l'autre, le ghetto, les gangs, le trafic de ganja, une misère de plus en plus noire. Un mélange explosif qu'une seule étincelle suffirait à faire exploser. Et si celle-ci venait de Zack Clay, une star du reggae de retour au pays après un triomphe international ? Lui seul a en effet le pouvoir de rassembler les gangs et la rue pour venir à bout de l'oppression, des injustices et des inégalités. Mais entre un message prophétique de paix et le passage à la lutte armée, le fossé est grand. Zack devra ainsi faire un choix dont pourrait dépendre le sort de l'île tout entière.
Mêlant musique et politique, Perry Henzell nous offre un portrait sans concession d'une société dévorée par les inégalités et la corruption. On reconnaîtra à travers la figure de Zack l'ombre de Bob Marley.
Un pays des Caraïbes, qui fait fortement penser à la Jamaïque. D'un côté, une caste privilégiée qui tient le gouvernement, l'armée, les médias, la justice et toutes les richesses locales, une élite corrompue, qui oscille entre volonté d'indépendance et soumission aux riches investisseurs étrangers. De l'autre, le ghetto, les gangs, le trafic de ganja, une misère de plus en plus noire. Un mélange explosif qu'une seule étincelle suffirait à faire exploser. Et si celle-ci venait de Zack Clay, une star du reggae de retour au pays après un triomphe international ? Lui seul a en effet le pouvoir de rassembler les gangs et la rue pour venir à bout de l'oppression, des injustices et des inégalités. Mais entre un message prophétique de paix et le passage à la lutte armée, le fossé est grand. Zack devra ainsi faire un choix dont pourrait dépendre le sort de l'île tout entière.
Mêlant musique et politique, Perry Henzell nous offre un portrait sans concession d'une société dévorée par les inégalités et la corruption. On reconnaîtra à travers la figure de Zack l'ombre de Bob Marley.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
25 people want to read
About the author
Perry Henzell
5 booksPerry Henzell was most famous for being the director of the first Jamaican feature film, The Harder They Come (1972), starring Jimmy Cliff.
Henzell, whose ancestors included Huguenot glassblowers and an old English family who had made their fortune growing sugar on Antigua, grew up on the Caymanas sugar cane estate near Kingston. He was sent to a boarding school in the United Kingdom at fourteen and later attended McGill University in Montreal in 1953 and 1954. He then dropped out of this school, choosing instead to hitchhike around Europe. He eventually got work as a stagehand at the BBC. He returned to Jamaica in the 1950s, where he directed advertisements for some years until he began work on The Harder They Come.
Henzell also shot some footage for what was planned as his next film, No Place Like Home, in Harder's aftermath, but he went broke before he could finish the film. Fed up by this, and the lack of finance for further production, he went on to become a writer, publishing his first novel, Power Game, in 1982. Both were meant to complete a planned trilogy of films centering on Ivanhoe Martin. The footage for No Place Like Home was lost. Years later, he came across editing tapes in a lab in New York. Just to have a sense of completion, he worked on the project. When he showed it to a few friends, their response was enthusiastic. He eventually was able to retrieve the original footage. No Place Like Home was screened for the public at the 31st annual Toronto International Film Festival in September 2006 at the Cumberland Theatre; it was sold out. Film leads Carl Bradshaw (The Harder They Come, Smile Orange, Countryman) and Susan O'Meara attended and answered audience questions with Henzell after the screening. The film was scheduled to be screened at the Flashpoint Film Festival at the beginning of December 2006 in Negril.
Henzell died of cancer on November 30, 2006, aged 70, and is survived by his three children: Justine, Toni-Ann and Jason.
Henzell, whose ancestors included Huguenot glassblowers and an old English family who had made their fortune growing sugar on Antigua, grew up on the Caymanas sugar cane estate near Kingston. He was sent to a boarding school in the United Kingdom at fourteen and later attended McGill University in Montreal in 1953 and 1954. He then dropped out of this school, choosing instead to hitchhike around Europe. He eventually got work as a stagehand at the BBC. He returned to Jamaica in the 1950s, where he directed advertisements for some years until he began work on The Harder They Come.
Henzell also shot some footage for what was planned as his next film, No Place Like Home, in Harder's aftermath, but he went broke before he could finish the film. Fed up by this, and the lack of finance for further production, he went on to become a writer, publishing his first novel, Power Game, in 1982. Both were meant to complete a planned trilogy of films centering on Ivanhoe Martin. The footage for No Place Like Home was lost. Years later, he came across editing tapes in a lab in New York. Just to have a sense of completion, he worked on the project. When he showed it to a few friends, their response was enthusiastic. He eventually was able to retrieve the original footage. No Place Like Home was screened for the public at the 31st annual Toronto International Film Festival in September 2006 at the Cumberland Theatre; it was sold out. Film leads Carl Bradshaw (The Harder They Come, Smile Orange, Countryman) and Susan O'Meara attended and answered audience questions with Henzell after the screening. The film was scheduled to be screened at the Flashpoint Film Festival at the beginning of December 2006 in Negril.
Henzell died of cancer on November 30, 2006, aged 70, and is survived by his three children: Justine, Toni-Ann and Jason.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 28, 2010
Fairly straightforward, but epic in a way that's pretty impressive.
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