INDIE MEMPHIS FILM FESTIVAL SCREENING: Kumina Queen

Imogene “Queenie” Kennedy was a contemporary priestess in post-colonial Jamaica who catapulted her African spiritual practice into renown. But after centuries of erasure, what remains of the dance between the living and the dead?

In the wake of the loss of her mother, the filmmaker travels into the heart of Jamaican countryside to research kumina, an ancestral ritual. The ancient practice, she learns, is a driving force in Jamaica’s culture and identity, yet during the colonial period, its leaders were discarded as witches and even criminalized. Today, Queenie’s mysterious world of spirit possession reveals divergent pathways to freedom, healing, and transformation–to those who choose it.