PALIMPSEST: TALES SPUN FROM SEA AND MEMORIES

1st Assistant Camera

Director: Billy Gerard Frank

DP: Ray Flynn

Excerpt from billygerardfrank.com:

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, born in the Gold Coast (Ghana) in the Fante village of Agimaque. Cugoano was one the most radical and central African British opponents to have actively engaged in the fight against slavery in the eighteenth century, though his story and name are often overshadowed by other key figures like Olaudah Equiano, Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, among others, in the larger history and narratives of the abolitionist movement. His book Thoughts and Sentiments On The Evil Of Slavery, published in England after he gained his freedom, is one of the most direct criticisms of slavery by a writer of African descent.

He was kidnapped by slave traders at age thirteen in Ghana with a group of children while playing in the woods, brought to Grenada where he was enslaved on sugar plantations for about a year. He was then brought to England at the end of 1772 by Alexander Campbell, who owned many slaves and plantations in the West Indies, with his largest holdings on Grenada. In England, Cugoano was baptized and given the name John Stuart. Later he entered the service of the royal artist, Richard Cosway, where he was introduced to all the pageantries of class and colonial power in Great Britain, while writing Thoughts and Sentiments On The Evil Of Slavery.