THE MARIJUANA AFFAIR
Dir. William Greaves, 1975
Jamaica, 82 min
In English
SUNDAY, APRIL 20 – 7:30 PM
A tale of international intrigue from Trinidad to Jamaica, from Harlem to Kingston. United States narcotics agent Dick Farrington (Calvin Lockhart) is on leave in Kingston, his hometown, after inadvertently gunning down a youth on the streets of New York. But there’s no rest for the wicked, because this is a working sabbatical. The higher-ups have sent him to look into the marijuana trade—specifically, what sort of illicit activities are going on in US intelligence operations. But everyone keeps telling Dick that marijuana isn’t where the action is; cocaine and heroin are where things are really happening. But the higher-ups aren’t interested in those, and just want to break up the ganja ring. Corruption abounds, from the government to the local cops and back again.
THE MARIJUANA AFFAIR was long thought lost, but was recently unearthed from a storage unit in the form of a low-quality U-matic cassette tape. Greaves was purportedly unhappy with the film, and his widow Louise wasn’t interested in a potential rerelease in 2018. We are very thankful to the Greaves family for allowing this one-time screening.