Award-winning Jamaican filmmaker Sosiessia Nixon's new feature-length suspense film "Stew Peas" shines a spotlight on Jamaica's enduring West African-based magic and spiritual healing tradition known as obeah.
The film follows detective Tessa, obsessed with an old murder case, whose life unravels when her husband Neil falls under the spell of their new maid Marcia. The story takes a dark turn with the shocking revelation that Marcia has been adding her menstrual blood to Neil's food.
"This film focuses on the persisting Jamaican obeah belief that a woman could 'bind' a man in a relationship by serving him a meal of traditional kidney beans and meat stew, which becomes a potent love potion when her menstrual blood is added," Nixon said.
Nixon hopes the movie will spark dialogue about the tension between Christianity and obeah, rooted in the country's African heritage and still practiced today despite being outlawed by colonizers in the 1700s and remaining illegal.
Producer and actress Ava Eagle Brown, founder of Jamaica's Black River film festival, said the film will resonate with Caribbean people everywhere. "There is so much of us in this film, the things that make us Jamaican. It's probably going to have some men looking at their woman with suspicion and asking: 'What did you put in my stew peas?'"
Cultural studies scholar Sonjah Stanley Niaah said the belief is linked to the African view that natural elements, including menstrual blood, have inherent potency. She welcomed the opportunity to explore African spiritualities, often misunderstood and vilified by European colonialists.
The film arrives as Jamaica's creative industry struggles to recover from Hurricane Melissa, which forced Brown to cancel this year's film festival. "The hurricane destroyed so much... That is why we need projects like this that demonstrate the resilience of Jamaicans," she said.
Jamaica's film commissioner Jacqueline Jackson said films like "Stew Peas" are "a powerful testament to the resilience, ingenuity, and determination of Jamaica's creative industry" and encourage international productions to return.
Source: www.theguardian.com