Dir. Haile Gerima
1976　|　2h 30 min

Harvest: 3,000 Years　is Haile Gerima’s first feature set in Africa and a milestone in African cinema. This epic picture of life in contemporary Ethiopia was filmed in Amharic with local cast.

The screening will be introduced by Tessema Mulugeta, President, Bikila Award, who will speak about the film in the context of Gerima’s career.

A poor, nameless Ethiopian peasant family slogs away under the watchful eye of a feudal ruler. Sitting there comfortably, he shouts his orders from the veranda, under protest from a local ‘fool’. This man is also trying to convince the peasants of the only way out: get an education. The family seems accustomed to their repetitive and hopeless existence, cherishing memories of happier times and apparently accepting their fate… until something breaks in one of them.

Haile Gerima is an independent filmmaker and professor of film at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Ethiopia, Gerima emigrated to the United States in 1967. Following in the footsteps of his father, a dramatist and playwright, Gerima studied acting in Chicago before entering the School of Theater, Film and Television at University of California, Los Angeles where his exposure to Latin American films inspired him to mine his own cultural legacy. He has pursued a rich career as an internationally-recognised maker, producer and distributer of films focused especially on African and African-American themes.

This Haile Gerima mini-retrospective is a celebration of a remarkable film-maker, a complement to two of The Power Plant’s Winter 2019 exhibitions, and represents co-presentations of five films with The Power Plant and Art Gallery of Ontario, Hot Docs, and TIFF.