Walter Rodney: What They Don’t Want You to Know

‘Walter Rodney: What they don’t Want you to Know’ is an original 72-minute documentary featuring a murder, Cold War conspiracies, Black Power, the end of the Empire, and how that connects to the policing, surveillance practices, and social movements of today. This is the first film where Walter’s widow reveals the personal impact on the family of Walter’s assassination. It feeds a growing global appetite for history from a different perspective, as we grapple with the legacy of empire and colonialism and its impact on the modern world. Contributors include Angela Davis, Gina Miller, former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar, Edward and Donald Rodney, and Walter’s wife Patricia Rodney, as well as prominent historians. The film premiered at the British Film Institute's largest screen to a sell-out audience of 450, the BFI is Britain’s most prestigious film organisation. 

We reveal that historian Dr. Walter Rodney was under security surveillance from the age of 19, after visiting Russia and Cuba as a student. He was seen as subversive both as an academic and as an activist who supported anti-colonial movements and civil rights. Shockingly, a British secret propaganda unit paid for negative reviews of his work. It was perceived as a threat to the British post-colonial narrative and interests. The book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ is now a staple of university courses across the globe and Rodney is an inspiration for the social movements of today, whether BLM, Pan-Africanism, or reparations.  

The documentary uses declassified security service documents, revealing interviews and reconstruction to tell an important, yet little-known story. filmed with local crews in six countries in the Caribbean, US, Africa, and the UK detailing Rodney’s global influence.

Directed by father and son team, Daniyal Harris-Vajda and Arlen Harris. Arlen is an award-winning programme maker with over 30 years of experience in print, TV, and radio, working mainly for British television for World in Action, Panorama, and Dispatches. His reporting on racial segregation in the army for the Observer helped end the colour bar in the elite regiments guarding the Queen. He has made a film on Guiness, the beer and the family. He has filmed with pirates in the South China seas, in Beirut, and in Sri Lanka during the civil war and made films about the Iraq War. In the last two years Daniyal worked as an Assistant Producer, Cameraman and Editor at Noah Media Group. Documentaries he part filmed and helped produce have been shown on ITV, Netflix, France’s Canal Plus, Amazon Prime and had a cinematic release, ‘Arsene Wenger: Invincible’. The three-part series ‘South of the River’ about why South London is producing so much football talent in the face of twelve years of austerity was highly commended at the Broadcast Sports Awards in 2022 and won a bronze at the Sports Journalism Awards.