OLYMPIC GOLD COINS. . by the Soviet Union. the USSR. - part of 39-coin series minted 1980 Olympic coins out A Los Angeles-based company whose board chairman was one of the first businessmen to open up commercial relations with the Soviet Union after 1917 — and, who in fact, was a personal acquaintance of Lenin’s — is part of the new firm which has been awarded the exclusive rights to market the commemorative Olympic coin series minted by the State Bank of the USSR. The second series of coins — the first was released earlier this year — went on sale in Toronto Nov. 14 through Numinter Ltd., a company fermed by subsidiaries of a Paris investment house and Occidental Petroleum Ltd. whose 82-year-old board chairman, Dr. Armand Hammer, knew Lenin personally and still maintains close contact with the Soviet government. Although smaller in total numbers than earlier Olympic coin . issues, the Soviet series for the first time includes a platinum coin with a face value of 150 roubles. As is the case with the five- and 10- rouble silver coins and the 100-rouble gold coins, it is legal tender in Three per cent of the face value of all coins sold in Canada will go to the Canadian Olympic Association to help send athletes to the eye Games in Moscow and to provide assistance to amateur short Jimmy Cliff film still worth return showing A cultural hit over four years ago, The Harder They Come, returned to Vancouver’s Ritz Theatre last weekend with its story of Jamaica, reggae music and the attempt of one man to take on the music, religious and drug monopolies. singlehanded ‘‘with a six-gun in his waist.” With great music and oc- casionally excellent cinemato- graphic counterpoint, the film portrays, although often with repugnant violence and sexism, the oppression of poor blacks in Kingston’s shanty towns. The options open to them are few: ripping each other off, scavenging in garbage dumps, evangelism, the ganga (marijuana) trade, and imported western culture., The option that is lacking in the film is the political message of oppressed people organizing in their community, although the political wheelings and dealings of the music and drug trade barons and their corrupt connections with the local police makes hard political impact. The story takes shape around the coming of Ivan (Jimmy Cliff) to the city from a country Mango farm with a song, The Harder They Come, with which he tries to make it in the recording business. Needing money, he turns to the ganga trade until a local drug baron attempts to have him locked up because of his pointed questions about where all the money is going. Ivan kills four cops and becomes a single outlaw, popular in his community for trying to get a better deal for bottom level ganga traders. Now, of course, his song goes to number one on the charts and the music baron cashes in. Finally he is shot down by the army after missing the boat for Cuba where he naively thought he would be a hero. And there is the rub: he really did miss the boat because he has political conscious- ness; taking on the state, alone with a six gun is suicide. The option of class action politics is what the movie missed,-but the political realities of the collusions of monopoly control, the absolute power of the state and the futility of THE HARDER THEY COME, with Jimmy Cliff and The Rastas, Janet Bartley, Carl Dradshaw and the Maytals. Written by Perry Henzell and Trevor D. Rhone. Produced and directed by Perry Henzell. A New World’Picture. ~~ y taking it on alone is there, and that’s what makes The Harder They Come a good photograph of Jamaica, including a look at Rastafarian culture, and worth seeing when it returns to Van- couver again. —Richard Sorge ‘Day of Reckoning’ will | protest federal arts cuts | Vancouver’s ‘‘Day of Reckon- ing” was expected to be marked this Thursday as_ actors, musicians, writers, dancers and artists were to converge on the Vancouver courthouse at noon to protest massive cutbacks in arts funding announced by the federal government in September. The demonstration was organized by the newly-formed Vancouver Artists’ Alliance, made up of a number of theatre, dance and musical groups, as well as individual artists and artists’ organizations which have warned that the federal cost-cutting will result not only in drastic eurtail- ment of Canadian content in the arts but will also take away a substantial number of jobs. “Arts cutbacks will increase un- employment dramatically,” the Alliance said in a statement issued last week, “‘because the arts in- dustry is the most labor intensive sector in the economy.” It pointed out that, for every dollar invested in the performing arts, 70 per cent goes directly to Salaries and wages. “Cuts in government. spending on the arts means immediate economic stress for many of the 65,000 Canadians which Statistics Canada says are working in the arts, culture and communications industry, and will result in a new wave of unemployed artists,” the statement said. Even for those artists working, the Alliance noted, the average annual income is only about $5,000 a year. And artists are neither counted in unemployed statistics nor are they eligible for unemploy-. ment insurance. Because of that, artists intend as part of the action November 30 to march on Employment Canada to be registered and to insist that the federal agency deal with the unemployment created by the -cutbacks. The cost-slashing measures 4 carried out under the secretary of state’s department included budget reductions for the Canada Council, the National Arts Centre, the National Film Board, the Arts Bank and the Canadian Film De- velopment Corporation — reducing dramatically the support for the arts. - In addition, the CBC was stripped of $71 from its budget allocations, a reduction which has already resulted in the curtailment — of Canadian production — and fewer jobs for Canadian per- formers and writers. Taken together, the budget cuts will reduce Canadian production, which already occupies only a small portion of the arts, to a _ “culturally dangerous level,’’ the Artists Alliance warned. Their concern is borne out in the figures, widely publicized in recent weeks, which show that: e Canadians spend about 60 per cent of their TV-viewing time watching foreign programs, most "of them from the U.S. For childret ” the figure is 70 per cent; e Less than seven per cent of all books sold in Canada are by Canadian authors and Canadial publishers; e Only one out of 10 magazines — sold in Canada is Canadian;- _ e Less than five per cent 2 in Canadial © theatres were made in this movies shown country ; sales records in Canada havé Canadian content. The federal cutbacks had earliel prompted protest from more thal 30 prominent national cultural organizations which responded with the formation of the 1812 Com- mittee and a campaign to press the” federal government to restore arts ~ funding. The 1812 Committee together with representatives from various ~ organizations in the arts, mark “Arts Day” in October with 4 demonstration in Ottawa against the government cutbacks. fone WILD GEESE. With Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris. Directed by Andrew Mc- Laglen. At local theatres. -There’s never a dull moment in The Wild Geese, a star-studded action picture about mercenaries in Africa. Unfortunately, there’s seldom an honest one either, since it turns out that this $12 million work of photogenic blood and guts is little more than a propaganda piece for the racist regime of South Africa. In order to protect his copper interests in an unnamed African country, Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger) hires Col. Faulkner (Richard Burton) to lead a band of 50 mercenaries on a mission to rescue president Lim- bani, the country’s deposed liberal leader, from the hands of a corrupt dictator. The job goes off without a hitch until Matherson makes a_ last minute deal with the dictator and recalls the plane that is to take Limbani and the mercenaries out of the country. Stranded and hopelessly out- numbered, they decide to head south into Limbani’s home territory in the hope that showing the president to his people will pro- voke an uprising and, incidentally, save their skins. The makes of The Wild Geese bend over backwards to show that teriors, mercenaries are really a bunch of OK guys. Burton’s Col. Faulkner is an underneath their blood-soaked ex-. Shooting ‘em appealingly abrasive, hard- drinking character. “There is a special clause in my contract which says that my liver is to be buried separately with honors,”’ he quips. His fellow officers are even nicer: Raefer Jaunders (Richard Harris) is an idealist who com- ~ petes with his young son to see who can be the cutest; Shawn Finn (Roger Moore) is a suave ladies’ man who signs up with the Mafia only to find that he’s been hired to transport bad drugs. “I don’t push drugs ... ever. It’s my religion,” he explains before forcing his employer to swallow a large quantity of strichnine-laced heroin. What a sweetheart. In fact, the whole lot of them come across as guys you wouldn’t mind having a few beers with, as long as there isn’t a contract out on you. Although The Wild Geese is directed by Andrew McLaglen, who specializes in making. westerns, this is a little more than your average shoot-em-up moved to an exotic setting. The political message comes through in conversations between Peter, a white South African mercenary (Hardy Kruger) and president Limbani (Winston Nt- shona). Their relationship is initially one of racial friction as Peter calls Limbani ‘“‘kaffir,” the South African equivalent of nigger. . I dois BURTON (left), MOORE .. ._ mercenaries in a $12 million propaganda piece. But his racism melts away with improbable rapidity in the face of the president’s noble eloquence. “We need each other, white man,” explains Limbani. ‘‘We’ve got the whole world using us now. Setting group against group. Destroying’ Africa.” Noble sentiments, indeed, until one reads between the lines. Those outside forces that are attempting to impose ‘‘their brand of slavery” ‘are, according to the film, none other than the socialist countries. - up for apartheid plug the film, telling Toronto Star filmed in South Africa, and the} © makers of the film “gratefully” | acknowledged the assistance of the} — administration of the Transvaal] A Cuban and two East German officers appear in the movie on the side of the evil dictator, and ‘ j mention is made of Soviet equip- | ment. Serving as “technical adviser” 7 to the makers of The Wild Geese} was Col. ‘‘Mad Dog”’ Mike Hoare, a] real-life mercenary whose brutal activities helped foreign interests] retain control over the Belgian Congo (now called Zaire) in the mid 1960’s, and who also par-} ticipated in an unsuccessful at-] tempt to block Angola’s fight for] — f independence in 1975-76. a Hoare was in Toronto recently to movie critic Clyde Gilmour that Africa is heading towards an] “absolutely inevitable bloodbath.” (Sound familiar?) He claims to be 4 a ‘politically motivated” mer- cenary. ‘‘I would not even consider any undertaking unless it was somehow connected with anti-com-} munism,”’ he explains. In addition; The Wild Geese was province. : Panorama, a publication of the} — South African government, is plugging the film. And we all know] > how interested the South African government is in seeing Blacks and] whites working ‘“‘together.”’ z —Shane Parkhill PACIFIC TRIBUNE— DECEMBER 1, 1978—Page 10 e Only four per cent of the total : ; q ; ‘ :