The Terror and The Time

In 1953, what was then known as British Guiana elected its first “internal self government” under colonial rule. Nervous about the government’s progressive programs and supposed Soviet influence, the British suspended the constitution, jailed the democratically elected leaders, and staged a military invasion. Made in 1978, The Terror and the Time is an incendiary piece of agitprop documentary filmmaking that revisits the events of that seminal year in Guyanese history. Set to a series of poems by the great poet Martin Carter and against the backdrop of the cold war and events of 1953 in such places as Iran, Guatemala, Kenya and the US, this film—the first of only two works by the Victor Jara Collective—was banned by Guyana’s government, and has rarely screened since it was made.