Sweet Sugar Rage

The Afterlives of Sugar brings together films that consider the sugar economy not just as an industry but as a foundational structure of colonial modernity. Moving between Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this series reveals the violence of the plantation not as a relic of the past, but as a structure whose afterlives continue to shape the present. 

Honor Ford-Smith and Harclyde Walcott's Sweet Sugar Rage (1985) follows Sistren, a Jamaican women’s theatre collective, as they translate the lived experiences of rural and urban women into a collective political consciousness. Improvisation, roleplay and testimonies underpin dramatisations of these women's realities which expose the gendered realities of their labour under postcolonial capitalism. 

As the first screening in The Afterlives of Sugar, this film exposes the organisation of labour as a manifestation of colonial exploitation. By centring women’s voices, Sweet Sugar Rage foregrounds resistance to these oppressive structures as a shared and embodied practice.

Doors open at 2.30pm; event starts at 3pm and ends at 4.30pm.

Image credit: Sweet Sugar Rage - Sistren Theatre Collective, 1985. Courtesy of the artists and Cinenova Distribution.