Picture This: 'The Harder They Come'

A special screening of the film that brought reggae music to the world and made the late Jimmy Cliff a global icon.

Blessed with one the best soundtracks ever put on film, "The Harder They Come" is a gritty and razor sharp vision of working class life in Jamaica, a ground-breaking film that demonstrated that music and art can change the world. Jimmy Cliff who died in 2025 plays Ivan, a young songwriter who leaves the country for the big city to find his fortune. His dreams of making it in the music business and his battles with crooked promoters, religious conservatives and criminals on both sides of the law make him a folk hero.

Shot in 1972 at the dawn of the blaxpoitation era in American movies following the success of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Shaft, and Super Fly, this Jamaican film is a significant achievement in the development, in the 1970s, of both an international Black popular culture and worldwide Black independent film movement.

Professor Mychal Odom of Mesa College will facilitate a Q&A session after the film

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