Year: 2024

The 1963 film adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel of Lord of the Flies has become a classic of US Independent Cinema. By comparing the situation of the film shoot on the Caribbean island of Vieques (part of Puerto Rico) with Golding’s parable about human violence, this article explores the ironic failure of the filmmakers to recognise the historical violence that continued to plague this particular island as a contested site. Peter Brook’s approach to the novel demanded an attitude of innocence on the part of his novice actors and crew members to capture the authenticity that he sought. His so-called documentary approach to an island narrative was only achieved through the fiction of obfuscating the real violence taking place on and around Vieques.

As an archive-based film, Summer of Soul is in many ways a perfect illustration of the significance of Walter Benjamin’s claim that “In order for a part of the past to be touched by the present instant [Aktualität] there must be no continuity between them.” Summer of Soul is subtitled “When the revolution could not be televised,” a line borrowed from Gil Scott-Heron, for whom it was a critique of the banality of white TV. The irony is, of course, that the Harlem Cultural Festival was televised in 1969, although its broadcast was limited to two one-hour segments at reputedly obscure hours with little to no publicity.