‘The Past Is Not Our Future’ film screening and director Q&A scheduled

Matthew J. Smith, a professor of Caribbean history and chair of the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, will present his documentary “The Past Is Not Our Future” and answer questions from the audience at a screening sponsored by the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University.

The event, which is open to the public, will take place:

TUESDAY, SEPT. 25, 2018

5 P.M.

ASKEW STUDENT LIFE CENTER, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

942 LEARNING WAY

“The Past Is Not Our Future” documents the early period in the life of Guyanese revolutionary and historian of Africa, Walter Rodney. It places Rodney the student, the brilliant idealist whose restlessness was his greatest motivator, in the context of a Caribbean in flux. Rodney studied history at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. When Jamaica shifted finally to full independence in 1962, Rodney was already exploring other models on which the Caribbean’s future could be based. A student visit to Cuba affected him greatly. So did the silences which he had to confront in his education.

African history seldom evolved in the curriculum beyond the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and even then its coverage tended toward the prosaic accounting of region and numbers. Dissatisfied with the answers to his questions, Rodney started answering them for himself. The ancient history and the contemporary release from the formal grip of colonialism on the continent were urgent concerns of the well-traveled undergraduate, who also visited the United States, England and Russia between 1960 and 1963. This path to intellectual self-discovery and revolutionary awakening is the soul of the film.

Matthew J. Smith wrote, directed and produced the film.