“Grenada we were told was a friendly island nation for tourism, well it wasn’t. It was a Soviet / Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy.” – Ronald Reagan, President of United States (1981-1989)
“The Grenada Revolution undoubtedly, in the entire history of such events has proven to be the most humanizing revolution of all. That is a statement of fact that cannot be challenged.” – Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada (1979-1983)
March 27, 2014: Maurice Bishop always knew that the people of Grenada deserved a life better than the corruption and propaganda they were suffering under then Prime Minister Eric Gairy, (1974-1979). Gairy’s legacy of economic and technical stagnation coupled with rampant unemployment during his tenure was the galvanizing force for change. A sense of liberation and hopefulness grew as Grenadians rallied behind the leadership of Maurice Bishop and Unison Whiteman, and through their fledgling New Jewel Movement (“NJM”) started a revolution of empowerment and prosperity that broke the shackles of the Gairy regime.
The assassination of Maurice Bishop and members of his inner cabinet at Fort Rupert on October 19th, 1983, ended the four year rule of his People’s Revolutionary Government (“PRG”). Six days later the US Armed Forces invaded the independent sovereign nation of Grenada by launching operation “Urgent Fury”. With previously unseen archival footage, Co-Director’s Bruce Paddington and Luke Paddington segue between an amalgam of Island and geopolitics as they unearthed the growing pains, civic breakthroughs and internal shortcomings of this short lived government in, “Forward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution”.
So how did we get here?
The formation of the NJM was a direct response to the indiscriminate killing of Grenadians brave enough to openly challenge the Gairy regime. So it came as no surprise to many on the receiving end that Gairy’s secret army took their regime cues on dealing with civil unrest from the supreme dictator, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile. Maurice felt that sting first hand through the systematic murder of his father Rupert, a key planner in the movement. To counter this, the NJM developed alliances with the Marxist government of Cuba. Months of national protests lead to the participation in an open democratic process to advance their struggle along different lines, thus allowing more than one strategy for assuming state power. Suffice it to say, the political philosophy being put forward by Bishop was not only needed but welcome medicine to his constituents.
The Paddington’s heavily peppered Forward Ever with a flourish of graphically meditative stills backed up with firsthand accounts of atrocities by those who managed to survive the experiences just in case there were any unbelievers in our midst. From the November 18th, 1973 secret police attacks on the NJM in the town of Grenville to their March 13th, 1979 Armed Revolution to overthrow the Gairy regime, fact based reporting won the day. Coverage of the US invasion of Grenada on October 25th, 1983, which was in direct violation of the UN Charter to which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denounced this action emphatically, showed the international significance of this political play. File footage of the now Prime Minister Maurice Bishop speaking at Hunter College in New York in 1983 on Grenada’s economic and political reawakening was a testament to how far the PRG had come.
Yet, despite this growing international support, all was not well during the PRG period. And as all good documentarians do, the Paddingtons gave a voice and equal weight to stories surrounding the thousands of political detainees, among them, the recently voted out former Prime Minister Tillman Thomas and veteran journalist Leslie Pierre, that ran counter to Bishop’s ideology casting a dissenting shadow on the PRG’s human rights record. Forward Ever then re-enters the arena of geo-politics as the US voiced their displeasure with the entrenched Grenada / Cuba alliance in the era of the cold war propaganda along with their untrue assertion that the newly constructed International Airport in Grenada was actually doubling as a military base. Deep fissures were starting to form within the PRG leadership with rumours of an internal coup along with Bishop’s subsequent house arrest. The winds of change were starting to undo all the hard work and goodwill amassed over years of struggles.
This very complex of stories was coherently distilled down to its key talking points. The Paddington’s don’t soft peddles the narrative by giving ineffectual vignettes, rather they offer in excruciating detail first person accounts that are hard to forget. The dry eyed remorseless retelling by former army officer Callistus Bernard on the rounding up, machine gunning then burning of Maurice Bishop and his cabinet is soul crushing. To this day their bodies have never been found.
Verdict: 3.5 out of 5: The historical narrative of Grenada’s Revolution is a powerful piece for documentary reporting. By framing the central theme within the confines of the birth of the NJM and PRG movements then following their ascension through the Gairy regime and documenting their implications on the international political arena during a time of cold war made for a compelling storyline of the little revolution that could. Bruce and Luke Paddington have provided a critical insight into the substantive nature of this revolution and what one man with one vision was willing to sacrifice in order to make a better life for the people of Grenada.
The fundamental goal of revolution must be peace.
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada
Language: English
Directors: Bruce Paddington, Luke Paddington
Writers: Bruce Paddington, Luke Paddington
Producers: Luke Paddington, Princess Donelan
DOP: Barry Collymore
Runtime: 113 minutes
Premiere: North American
Cast: Beverly Steele, Selwyn Strachan, Andrew Bierzynski, Lyden Ramdhanny, Peggy Nesfield, Godfrey Augustine, Tillman Thomas, Nellie Payne, Bob Evans, Ann Peters, Pamela Cherebin, Callistus Bernard, Einstein Louison, Ann Bain, Dr. Keith Mitchell.
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