The film is a compelling compilation of testimonies, voices and opinions gathered around five continents.

The Live8 concert in July this year, in London’s Hyde Park was set up to raise awareness about the Black continent issues, but before the first guitar riffs, the gig highlighted one single home truth: Africans should do it for themselves! The lack of performers from Africa in the initial line-up raised eyebrows on every side of the argument.

Cue Ligali, an east London organisation whose role is to monitor the media, act as complaint body, be active in the educational field and raise awareness on the issues that plague black communities up and down the country: gun crime, rebellion against authority, stop and search…On the same day, a day of African remembrance was staged at the Hackney Town Hall and the day-long event put together by Ligali is a “positive day to remember the struggle against slavery, our ancestors and their sacrifice in what is widely considered as an holocaust,”‘ according to Emma Pierre-Joseph, spokesperson for the organisation. She also told CEN Magazine that it is “a forward-looking day to provide a platform of reflection for the whole community and its future.”

The centrepiece of the event is the screening of a newly released DVD on the African slavery trade, the shameful human trade officially abolished in 1772 in the UK and its empire. Liverpool was the unofficial capital of the slave trade with more than 10 millions souls from the continent‘s west coast (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal) transiting there, on their way to build the new continent, America. Other towns throughout Europe, shared that infamous tag Bordeaux, Nantes, Bristol in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Barcelona in Spain and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Winner already of the best documentary prize at the Pan-African film festival and Bridgetown film festival and with testimonies ranging among others, from Dr M. Karenga, Amira Baraka, Desmond Tutu, Dr Helena Woodward, Shaykh Muhammad Shareef and Trevor Marshall. The film, is a compelling compilation of testimonies, voices and opinions gathered around five continents and more than 20 countries on the subject. “‘We went to universities as well as into the neighbourhoods to talk to the common folk,” says Asante Jr, the talented scriptwriter and poet, who was a first year media graduate at the time when he started working on the project.

HIV/AIDS, crime, drugs, low expectation, and underdevelopment plague most people of African origin throughout the world. 500 years later, after slavery, colonialism, the cold war and subsequent neo-colonialism, daughters and sons of the continent are still suffering and cannot enjoy basic freedom or wealth. Told from the continent vantage-point, the film scrutinises the holocaust and subsequent uprooting of Africans from their homeland and culture. In the words of producer-director, Owen ‘Alik’ Shahadah, “500 Years Later chronicles the struggle of a people who have fought and continue to fight for the most essential human right: Freedom.”

Owen used to produce a stylish work of art and set up a website www.500yearslater.com to foster and further the debate, knowing that the film has already garnered interest from education bodies throughout the world, willing to use it as a teaching method.

That might be exactly what African communities in the UK need, as reveals Asher D, the rapper and member of the So Solid Crew collective in his subsequent Channel 4 documentary aired in November 2004, surfing on the same subject, but neighbouring issue of the ‘N word’ (nigger/ nigga).

“It’s definitely an issue that people of my generation don’t know enough about black history and that’s a point I raise throughout the programme.” He finishes with “when it comes to the teaching of black history, there is none” and for the first time, our rulers seem to agree with him, as Liverpool’s Riverside Labour MP Louise Ellman called for the Blair-Brown government to introduce teaching slave trade history in British schools and asked for a national day of remembrance. 117 MPs across the chamber joined her and settled for the debate to take place in the commons, during Black History month in October this year. However, on the question of responsibility, which could trigger lawsuits and potential reparations, the government washed its hands of the problem, stating that it “cannot take responsibility for what happened over 170 years ago” even if it recognizes that “the slave trade is one of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man” and added that it wasn’t an unlawful act at the time the British government condoned it. 500 Years Later the film’s sequel will be released in 2006, focusing on AIDS/HIV, the colonisation of the African continent, neo-colonisation, the ill-effects of globalisation with a chapter on Bretton-Woods institutions like the World Bank and the IMF.

The film has an obvious quality, for its combination of thoughtful photography signed by the director Owen, retrospective voices and using a multi-media platform to get its point across, which could see him becoming a benchmark in filmmaking history. Although filed with facts, it relies on a gripping narrative infused by the flavour and a soundtrack for poetical freedom and liberation. Showing the chains that tied their ancestors and contemporaries, it also offers a serious path outside of the plantations.

Scriptwriter, Asante Jr is a poet master with an interesting ability to transfer its art from the written/spoken word to the screen and his influence transpires throughout 500 years later. “To have people be so receptive and come up to us crying and embrace us after seeing the film is just amazing,” reveals Asante Jr. “We worked on the project for two and half years, and you just don’t know if people are going to like it; you are just going on passion and what you think is right.”

Right he surely was.