They Are We

In Perico, Cuba, an Afro-Cuban community has kept alive songs and dances brought from West Africa via the slave trade almost two centuries ago. Through years of searching, filmmaker Emma Christopher tried to find the origins of these cultural artefacts. Then, in a remote village in Sierra Leone, people watching a recording of the Cubans’ songs and dances joyously declared “They are we!”, and joined in with the songs. In this extraordinary film, their Cuban brothers and sisters finally come home.

They Are We (2014)

Region:

Australia, Cuba, Sierra Leone

Language:

English, Gbande, Kono, Krio, Mende and Spanish, English Subtitles,

Rating:

GA

Director(s):

Emma Christopher


Emma Christopher

Emma Christopher

Emma Christopher is an academic historian, writer and anti-slavery campaigner who is on the faculty at the University of Sydney. She currently holds a five-year Australian Research Council Fellowship, and has worked extensively in West Africa. Her first book, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, was hailed as “the most important book on the Atlantic slave trade in a very long time”; her second book, A Merciless Place, jointly won the Ernest Scott prize for best book in Australian history and won the Kay Daniels prize for best book in Australian colonial history. They Are We (2014) is her first film.

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