The title of Coconut/Cane & Cutlass represents the psyche behind the collective memory, history and imagination of Indo-Caribbean people. The film is a mythic/poetic rumination on exile, displacement, and nationhood from the perspective of an Indo-Caribbean lesbian who migrated to Canada twenty years ago.
Intersections of the autobiographical voice (in the realm of mythic/memory and the personal) co-mingle with the historical, to produce a film that is neither an “official historical document” nor a “personal history.” Instead, Coconut/Cane & Cutlass is a hybrid fusion of the autobiographical, historical and experiential, in an episodic structure that is richly textured and layered with optically printed imagery, front-screen projection, re-created archival images, oral narratives/histories, a spirit dance, and theatrically stylized dramatic scenes. The poetic, fragmented style and structure of the film represent the exile’s internal struggle to “reconstitute” her own sense of self in relation to her history and ancestry.
Available on DVD on the compilation Artist Spotlight Series: Michelle Mohabeer.