''Land of Look Behind'' is a 1982

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

about

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

. It was filmed in May and June of 1981 by Alan Greenberg, and was the director's first film. The film's cinematographer was Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, an associate of

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with un ...

. The musical score is by K. (Kerry) Leimer. The film begins with footage of Jamaica's wild interior region called the Cockpit Country. It also features footage of the funeral of

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...

musician

Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...

. A number of

Rastafari Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control of ...

are interviewed, and performers

Gregory Isaacs Gregory Anthony Isaacs OD (15 July 1951 – 25 October 2010)Thompson, p. 127. was a Jamaican reggae musician. Milo Miles, writing in ''The New York Times'', described Isaacs as "the most exquisite vocalist in reggae".Miles, Milo (1992),RECORDI ...

and

Mutabaruka Allan Hope (born 1952), better known as Mutabaruka, is a Jamaican Rastafari dub poet, musician, actor, educator, and talk-show host, who developed two of Jamaica's most popular radio programmes, ''The Cutting Edge'' and ''Steppin' Razor''. His ...

are also featured. In addition, Father Amde Hamilton of

The Watts Prophets The Watts Prophets were an American political poetry group from Watts, California, United States. Like their contemporaries The Last Poets, the group combined elements of jazz music and spoken-word performance, making the trio one that is often ...

performs a spoken word piece during Marley's funeral service. ''Land of Look Behind'' won the

Chicago International Film Festival The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the comp ...

's Gold Hugo Award. Werner Herzog has said in the film's DVD commentary that "This film achieves things never seen before in the history of cinema." The American director

Jim Jarmusch James Robert Jarmusch (; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films including '' Stranger Than Paradise'' (1984), '' Down by Law'' ( ...

writes in the DVD liner notes that ''Land of Look Behind'' is "striking...beautiful...near-perfect." In 2007, the film was released on DVD, with interviews of and commentary by Greenberg and Herzog.

External links

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Article from ''The New York Times''
* American documentary films Films shot in Jamaica Rastafari 1982 films 1982 documentary films Works about Jamaica Documentary films about the Caribbean 1982 directorial debut films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films {{US-documentary-film-stub