At the World Cinema Showcase, Che Guevara lives on. By JACOB POWELL.

OPENING with archival footage of a string of revolutions from around the globe, right off the bat Chevolution concerns itself with more than just its eponymous subject. Not so much a documentary about the actual Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, it is more a look at the entity we have fashioned him into: a symbol of violence and unethical guerrilla justice to some, and of hope and freedom from oppression to others. Directors Luis Lopez and Trisha Ziff explore the way in which iconic images and people become items of cultural consumption, adapted to help give expression to our own varied array of ideologies.

Ahead of the World Cinema Showcase, BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM revists an arthouse, post-colonial, cult classic.

PERRY HENZELL’s The Harder They Come could be viewed now as a slightly dated curiosity. The story of a country boy who comes to the city but is dragged down by the corruption and dastardliness is hardly the most revolutionary narrative, and the film, to a certain extent, drew on the early subversive elements of blaxploitation films (e.g. the amoral adventures and righteous anger of Sweet Sweetback for example). The story is based on real-life gangster Rhygin, a Robin Hood figure in 1940s Jamaica. But the film’s popularity rests on a number of key factors. First is the film’s relentless energy and anger. Sure, Henzell takes on the easy targets – the corrupt police, the church, and the simpering fools who attempt to plant their flag on the mountain of excrement that was left for them by the ravages of colonialism – but the film judges its protagonist as heartily as its villains. Second, is the film’s dense portrayal of urban Kingston, with the shantytowns and the intersection of crime, music, drugs and religion. And third is the film’s frankly astonishing soundtrack, one of the greatest musical soundtracks ever committed to celluloid, which in the process helped drag Jamaica’s barely kept secret, reggae, towards a global market.