Streaming to be preceded by interview with Countryman co-star Carl Bradshaw

Friday December 5th, Palm Pictures will revive the great tradition of “midnight movies” with an exclusive online screening of the legendary reggae classic Countryman. Directed by Dickie Jobson, the film is a 1982 cult classic, featuring classic tracks from Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, and Toots and The Maytals.

Preceding the movie screening, at 11:30 pm on Friday 12/5, the film’s co-star Carl Bradshaw will live-chat from Jamaica via Google Hangouts On Air with veteran reggae journalist Rob Kenner. The live chat with Bradshaw and the special “Midnight Movie Streaming” will be broadcast live via Google Hangouts here.

Countryman, a real life Jamaican fisherman and mystic, played himself in the film. His feats of skill and daring in that movie made him an “ital” (natural) Rasta superhero and were an accurate reflection of his way of life.

Island Records founder and Countryman Executive Producer Chris Blackwellrecalls, “He was a unique character, able to live in the jungle. We decided to do a film with him because you could never find a movie star who could wrestle with alligators and run through swamps the way he did. Countryman was an amazing person, always positive and full of humor. Being of African and Indian descent, he embodied the Jamaican motto, ‘Out of Many, One People.’”

Interview from Countryman Executive Producer and Island Records Founder Chris Blackwell premiered at Boomshots.
Watch Chris Blackwell’s interview about Countryman here

After running away from his family when he was six years old, Countryman made the bush his home. He became a fisherman and lived in a shack on Hellshire Beach outside Kingston. There, he was befriended and championed by a generation of artists, including Perry Henzell (director of The Harder They Come), who directed him in 1973’s No Place Like Home. In the same year, writer Michael Thomas and photographer/producer Arthur Gorson visited Jamaica to do a profile of Jamaican culture and Bob Marley for Rolling Stone; but it was Countryman whose face the editors chose to put on the cover.

Gorson comments “He had a guru quality in the body of a gazelle. He was the image of the magical native, and I use that word advisedly. Countryman loved being filmed, he was a star. He was untrained, but performed as if he was a skilled actor.”