Documentary, "Bad Friday," to screen at Hollywood film festival

From left: John L. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D.; a poster about Coral Gardens; Deborah Thomas, Ph.D.

The documentary “Bad Friday: Rastafari and the Coral Gardens,” by Annenberg’s John L. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D., the Richard Perry University Professor of Communication and Anthropology, will be shown this Friday, October 28, at the Hollywood Black Film Festival in Los Angeles.

 

Co-directed by Deborah Thomas, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology at Penn, the documentary focuses on a community of Rastafarians in Western Jamaica who annually commemorate the 1963 Coral Gardens “incident,” a moment just after independence when the Jamaican government rounded up, jailed, and tortured hundreds of Rastafarians.