The Terror and the Time (1978)
The 1970s were a fertile period for politically committed documentary filmmaking across the Caribbean and South America, with filmmakers working outside mainstream broadcasting structures to produce work that mainstream channels had little appetite for. The Terror and the Time sits squarely in that tradition. Released in 1978, the film turns its attention to the history of colonial violence and the legacies of slavery in Guyana, a country that had only achieved independence from Britain in 1966 after more than a century and a half of imperial rule. That context matters enormously. By the late 1970s, Guyana under Forbes Burnham was itself a deeply contested political space, and any documentary engaging with the country's history of coercion and repression was making an implicit argument about the present as much as the past. The film's title draws on the kind of charged, poetic language associated with the Guyanese literary and political tradition, which gives you some sense of the register it aims for.
The production came out of The Victor Jara Collective, a group named after the Chilean poet and musician murdered in the aftermath of Pinochet's 1973 coup. That name alone signals where the filmmakers' sympathies lie. The collective was one of several small, ideologically engaged production outfits operating in this period on minimal budgets, prioritising access and argument over polish. Direction is credited to Rupert Roonaraine, a Guyanese intellectual and activist who was involved in the Working People's Alliance, the left-wing opposition movement associated with the historian and scholar Walter Rodney. Roonaraine's background was more academic and political than it was cinematic, which shapes the texture of what he produced here: a document that reads more like an extended essay or a filmed lecture than a conventional broadcast documentary. At 70 minutes, it sits at an awkward length, too long for a short and too compressed to do full justice to its subject matter. If you've come across similarly earnest political documentaries from this era on the blog, the One People review gives a useful point of comparison for how this kind of committed, low-budget work from the mid-1970s can land with varying degrees of success.
The three figures most prominently associated with the film are Martin Carter, Eusi Kwayana, and Cheddi Jagan, each of them a significant figure in Guyanese public life. Carter was one of the most important poets to emerge from the Anglophone Caribbean, whose work during the 1950s resistance to British colonial rule gave him a reputation well beyond Guyana's borders. Kwayana was a civil rights activist and founding member of the Working People's Alliance, while Jagan was a former Premier of British Guiana and a central figure in the country's independence movement, whose leftist politics made him a persistent source of anxiety for both British and American governments throughout the Cold War period. Having these three voices in the same documentary is genuinely significant historically, whatever one makes of how their contributions are framed. Documentary work featuring figures of this stature rarely gets much mainstream attention, which is part of why films like this one, alongside others we've looked at here such as In the Sky's Wild Noise and Listen to Britain, reward attention even when they are formally rough around the edges.
Pulling up Rupert Roonaraine’s 1978 documentary The Terror and the Time feels less like watching a conventional film and more like unearthing a dusty, forgotten time capsule from the depths of a broadcasting archive. The visual presentation is unapologetically raw and grainy, and the narrator’s clipped, mid-century English accent immediately anchors you in a bygone era of television. It’s a fascinating aesthetic, whether intentional or just a byproduct of its age, that sets a distinctly sombre, almost clinical tone right from the opening credits.
The subject matter is undeniably heavy, tackling the brutal realities of colonialism and the deep, scarring roots of slavery in Guyana, or British Guiana, as it was known at the time. I have to admit, watching a British-produced documentary from the late 70s handle such a sensitive, explosive topic immediately raises my suspicions. You can’t help but feel there is a certain paternalistic, slightly whitewashed lens at play here. The framing occasionally feels like it’s trying to soften the blow of imperial atrocities, which is a frustrating dynamic to swallow when you’re dealing with such profound historical injustice.
However, despite those valid reservations, the film still manages to pack a genuine punch. It is a hard watch in places, and rightly so. The archival footage and the stark recounting of the systemic horrors inflicted upon the population don't entirely pull their punches. I found myself learning a massive amount about a chapter of history that is far too often glossed over or entirely omitted from standard Western curricula. The sheer weight of the content forces you to pay attention, overriding the dated presentation with raw, uncomfortable facts.
This is a flawed but deeply necessary historical document. Roonaraine captured a vital, if imperfectly framed, snapshot of a nation grappling with its traumatic past. It might not be the definitive, unvarnished truth we would demand from a modern filmmaker, but as an educational piece that forces you to confront the dark mechanics of empire, it absolutely holds its weight. It’s a highly informative, thought-provoking watch.
The Terror and the Time is the kind of film that is easier to respect than to enjoy, and Macca's measured response reflects that honestly. It occupies a specific and genuinely uncommon niche: a politically motivated document produced by people with real skin in the game, wrestling with history that most Western audiences have never been asked to reckon with. Its flaws are real, and they are not merely aesthetic ones. Questions about framing, audience, and whose voice is centred in stories of colonial violence are not incidental concerns but go to the heart of what a film like this is trying to do and who it imagines it is speaking to. The Victor Jara Collective's intentions seem sincere, but sincerity and clarity of vision are not always the same thing. Still, as a record of a particular political moment, featuring voices that deserve far wider recognition, there is something here worth sitting with. Guyana's history didn't become any less complicated after the cameras stopped rolling, and neither does this film.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1978 | Watched: 2026-07-17
Where to watch
Watch in the US
Stream: Criterion Channel
Physical: Amazon US
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