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, Harlem to Kingston. United States narcotics agent Dick Farrington (Calvin Lockhart) is on sabbatical after inadvertently gunning down a youth who got in his crosshairs on the streets of New York City. But there’s no rest for the wicked, because this is a working sabbatical. The higher-ups have sent him to his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica to look into the marijuana trade, specifically: what sort of illicit activities are going on in U.S. intelligence operations? But everyone keeps telling Dick that Marijuana isn’t where the real action is. Nope, cocaine and heroin are where things are really happening, but the higher-ups aren’t interested in those, they want to break up the ganja ring. Corruption abounds, from the government, to the local cops, and back again.

Thought to be long lost, and recently unearthed from a low quality U-matic cassette tape found in a storage unit. Greaves was purportedly unhappy with the film, with his widow Louise not being interested in a potential re-release in 2018. We are very thankful to the Greaves family for allowing this one-time screening of THE MARIJUANA AFFAIR.