The First Rasta

A.k.a. "Le premier rasta". At the beginning of the last century, the young Leonard Percival Howell left Jamaica, became a sailor and travelled the world. On his way, he chanced upon all the ideas that stirred his time. From Bolshevism to New Thought, from Gandhi to anarchism, from Garveyism to psychoanalysis, he sought to find his promised land. With this cocktail of ideas, Howell returned to Jamaica and founded Pinnacle, the first Rasta community in 1939. By recreating a backdrop of that time from film archives, police reports and newspaper articles, we follow in the wake of this adventure and track the evolution of his thinking. Through direct witnesses we trace his evolution, from his return home in 1932 to the first manifestations of his movement. For the first time, these centenarian survivors describe a Rasta movement that is very different from the usual clichéd images.