Harvest: 3,000 Years

The film is about the daily lives of poor peasants in Ethiopia. Documentary methods and storytelling are used together. Its drama comes not from great events but from the matters in those lives that have not changed for years. The relation between the man who owns the land and the people who work it stands at the centre. The rhythm is unhurried; the time spent in the fields is itself part of the account. Haile Gerima made the work from inside a generation of African and Black directors who studied in the United States. That it was shot in Amharic and with local players is the film’s marked choice. The hundred and fifty minutes are used to carry that slowness. The Ethiopian production was completed in 1975.