The Reimagining Queen Nanny Documentary

Official Logline: Reimagining Queen Nanny – Chieftess of Blue Mountain’s biodiversity, forests and waters.

Director: Udemba McLean
Co-Writer/Narrator: Marcia B. Douglas (Ph.D.)

This documentary, written and produced by Jamaican Professor at NYU Leo Douglas, seeks to retell the story of Queen Nanny of the Maroons, national heroine of Jamaica. Traditionally Nanny has been portrayed through a lens of mountain guerrilla warfare, but here she is represented in what some scholars of the Black Atlantic and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade believe to be a more accurate and broader reality – an early Afro-Caribbean ecologist, a protector of the forests and watersheds, as the quintessential Black conservationist and environmental justice leader, and scholar of the sacred things and places of the mountains of eastern Jamaica.

According to Professor Douglas, “the documentary highlights the untold herstories of Queen Nanny as a fundamental means of deepening our understanding of the leadership of Afro-descendant women on whose shoulders we stand as natural history scholars and as members of the environmental movement.” The documentary is positioned as a fresh and informative retelling of community and ancestral cultural preservation on Jamaica, including a description of a rich pantheon of West African knowledge and traditional practices about wild birds, plants, herbal healing and the conservation of the natural world.

The documentary focuses on Akan/Ashanti continuations, gendered-roles, sacred plants, and Twi names that Jamaicans still use to describe things in the natural world today. Knowledge and experiences that are largely unrecognized or undiscussed in Jamaican culture as being of West African origin. By positioning Nanny as one of the island’s first naturalists, and as a central and early Afro-Caribbean eco-spiritual leader of renown, the documentary also explores questions about the intersection of racial identity, gender, sexuality, and religious racism in relation to womanhood and how Afro-Caribbean women are (and have been) perceived - if and when they choose to work on the land, be it as farmers, herbalists, eco-spiritual leaders or as environmental protectors.

Award-winning Jamaican Professor Marcia Douglas of the University of Colorado - Boulder, who portrays Queen Nanny in the documentary feature, said she felt that “Queen Nanny would have believed that nature was life, that it was spirit, and that the essence of our being remained around us, in the things that grew in the Mountains of Jamaica, even after death. That the natural world was also a spiritual world, a world of unseen and immeasurable powers, saturated with the energy and wisdom of our Afro-indigenous fore-parents, that all life was sacred, spiritual and full of teachable wisdom.”

The “Reimagining Nanny: Her Sword – A Seed Documentary” is part of a larger project which includes an original vocal composition about Nanny of the Maroons and five (5) large-scale winning visual arts representations of Queen Nanny which were exhibited at the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ) between 2022 and 2024 – commissioned for Jamaica’s 60th year of independence from Great Britain.

Core partners are the Natural History Museum of the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), BirdLife Jamaica, and the Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust (JCDT). The Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust (JCDT) is a non-governmental organization and charity with a mandate to advance environmental conservation and sustainable development with a focus on the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Overwhelming funding for this project was from private Jamaican citizens. The artwork created as part of this documentary project - “Moonlight Meditations of Mama Nanny” by Jamaican artist, Richard Nattoo - was donated to the Institute of Jamaica (in public trust). Additional support was provided by New York University (NYU) through its College of Arts and Sciences, Liberal Studies, and the NYU Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS).

The documentary, completed in October 2023, was released publicly on December 1, 2025.

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For further information or to schedule an interview contact:
Film Maker - Leo R Douglas
Email: LRD8@NYU.EDU
https://www.instagram.com/reimagining_nanny/

OR

Documentary Director - Udemba McLean
Email: imagebyultra@gmail.com
https://www.instagram.com/fulltimejamaican/

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The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have raised fuel costs and caused shortages of key fertilizers around the world, wreaking havoc on the agricultural industry. Adam Hanieh, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London, says the effects could be felt for a long time, particularly in the Global South.

“About a third of the world’s basic fertilizers now pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” says Hanieh, who adds that the “coming food crisis” is compounded by the climate and debt crises in much of the developing world. “It’s a perfect storm.”

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Picture this. It’s August 1905, and you’re standing near Mahenge in what was then German East Africa.

There’s fighting breaking out. Dust in the air. Gunfire in the distance. And then, out of the bush, you see something striking.

Large groups of African fighters moving toward a German position. Not scattered. Not hiding. Moving forward, directly into it.

Now here is the thing. This is a very uneven fight.

On the German side, you have colonial troops led by officers like Theodor von Hassel.

They’re dug in. They’re organised. And they have machine guns.

They’re also supported by askari, African soldiers trained under German command.

On the other side, most of the fighters are carrying spears and bows.
Some have firearms, but nothing close to what they’re up against.

And yet, they keep advancing.

Not because they don’t understand the danger. But because many of them believe they are protected.

Before the fighting, they had taken part in a ritual.

They were given what was known as maji, a kind of sacred water.
The belief was that this would protect them. That bullets would not harm them.

Now, from a distance, that might sound irrational.

But when you place it in context, it starts to make more sense.

Because this wasn’t just about belief. It was about pressure.

By 1905, German rule in the region had become extremely harsh.
Forced labour. Heavy taxation. And in particular, forced cotton farming.

Entire communities were being pushed to the limit. So what you’re seeing here is not just a battlefield moment.

It’s the point where that pressure finally breaks.

This is the Maji Maji Rebellion. One of the largest uprisings against colonial rule in African history……..


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Sources:

https://blackpast.org/global-a....frican-history/maji-

https://www.encyclopedia.com/h....istory/encyclopedias

https://afrolegends.com/2023/1....1/27/maji-maji-upris

https://unitedrepublicoftanzan....ia.com/history-of-ta

https://www.globalsecurity.org..../military/world/war/

https://iloveafrica.com/the-ma....ji-maji-rebellion-in

https://www.dw.com/en/kinjeket....ile-and-the-maji-maj

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67285182

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#majimaji #tanzania