Inna de Yard: the Soul of Jamaica

This textured documentary about the elders of Jamaican music opens with cheery piano tuner Dennis "Jah D" Fearon lovingly tending to an old upright in preparation for an "unplugged" hilltop recording session. While the neglected instrument is infested with rats and wood ants, the veterans gathered, Buena Vista Social Club style, appear in remarkable shape. Music courses through Jamaica's cultural-political past via its assembled stars. Ken Boothe, famous for international hit Everything I Own (and owner of a walk-in closet); Winston McAnuff, who wrote the song Malcolm X ("white men get vexed"); charismatic Congos leader Cedric Myton; Kiddus I, promisingly cast in 1978 British reggae drama Rockers then deported; and militant songbird Judy Mowatt, who abbreviates Jamaica's history to one line; "If a man got shot, somebody would sing about it." Webber, director of Girl with a Pearl Earring and Hannibal Rising as if to map his range, allows each unhurried participant their own chapter, verdantly photographed by Jodie Arnoux and Bernard Benant, with veranda recordings dropped in and a prestige show in a Parisian theatre to climax. A deep love of music paints this troubled isle as a paradise amid the corrugated iron, lapping waves and crowing cockerels.