THE HOUSE ON COCO ROAD is the personal and intimate account of filmmaker Damani Baker’s mother Fannie Haughton and her role and participation in American history.
Over the years she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar and activist/organizer.
In this family portrait of nationalism and freedom, Baker draws on poignant archival footage and insights from well-respected activists, including Angela Davis offering historical and emotional truths through the journey of one family striving for a better society.
Prolific singer, composer and bassist Me’shell Ndegeocello composed the moving score for the film, and Danny Glover served as one of the film’s producers.
In 1979 the Grenadian people carry out the first successful Revolution in the English speaking caribbean. Maurice Bishop becomes Prime Minister. The Revolution attracts workers from around the world including my mother, Fannie Haughton. In 1982 Angela Davis, her family, and my mother visit Grenada to witness this miraculous Peoples’ Revolution. In 1983 my mother is offered a position in the Ministry of Education and we leave our home in Oakland and move to Grenada. I’d never seen her happier. Grenada was briefly our home. In 1983 the United States led a military invasion following the assassination of the young popular Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop. We hid under the bed for three days as bombs shook our new paradise, and changed its course forever. Sixteen years later, in 1999, I returned to Grenada with my mother, and began shooting a documentary film, searching for her story, one that felt not just untold, but unfinished. In 2014, I discovered a box of family super 8 footage of my great grandmother in rural Louisiana on the land our family sharecropped and my grandmother’s migration west. I started to unravel my mother’s path to activism. I started to understand why my mother, and a group of tireless women, had put their lives on the line, daring to build a better world. You may not know their names, but they have changed the course of history.
