As Jamaica’s beaches are increasingly captured by private and tourist interests, a movement fights to reclaim access to the island’s coastline, exposing how tourism displaces communities, disrupts livelihoods, and degrades environments.

Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline is a documentary by Kingston-based Dutch filmmaking duo Emiel Martens and Elsie Vermeer in collaboration with JaBBEM and Keznamdi exploring the growing struggle for beach access in Jamaica. Since the 1950s, public access to the island’s beaches has steadily declined, leaving less than one percent of the coastline publicly accessible for Jamaicans. Over the decades, most of Jamaica’s beaches have been captured by private and tourist interests, and particularly since the 2000s large-scale hotel developments have limited beach access for Jamaicans.

This film follows the grassroots movement resisting the privatization of Jamaican beaches by zooming in on three frontline struggles: Bob Marley Beach near Kingston, the Blue Lagoon in the parish of Portland, and Mammee Bay Beach on the island’s North Coast. The interviewees, all Jamaicans, reveal how the 1956 Beach Control Act, which is still in effect today, vests ownership of the foreshore in the Jamaican state (and actually the British Crown) and traces how this colonial-era law, combined with the island’s all-inclusive tourism model, has displaced communities, disrupted livelihoods, and degraded environments. Interwoven with archival footage, news clips, and recordings of protest rallies and court cases, the interviewees situate today’s beach access struggles within Jamaica’s troubled history of land ownership following emancipation and independence. They argue that the island’s tourism industry replicates plantation logic by monopolizing land, concentrating wealth, exporting profits, and, ultimately, marginalizing the people.

Beach Inna Bondage shows that beach access, which is not only an issue in Jamaica but across the Caribbean and beyond, is an urgent matter of historical, economic, social, cultural and environmental justice, raising the question of who the tropical paradise of sun, sand, and sea truly serves, and at what cost…

Caribbean Creativity serves as the producer of this documentary.

Dir: Emiel Martens and Elsie Vermeer | 2026 | 29′ | Jamaica and the Netherlands | Documentary | Instagram | IMDb | FilmFreeway | Press Release

Film Location Jamaica is an upcoming documentary series mapping the history of Jamaica as a film location for both overseas and homegrown filmmakers.

Caribbean Creativity serves as the producer of this documentary, which is planned to be completed by the end of the year.

Dir: Emiel Martens | 2024 | The Netherlands and Jamaica | Documentary series

Yung Kunta is a short Afrofuturistic love story on migration, homophobia and racism. After yet another bullying incident, Yung Kunta, a young African DJ grappling with his sexual identity, decides to leave his home country, the Gambia, and to take the risky backway to Europe. He ends up in the Netherlands, where he gets to experience freedom and love he never thought possible. His former life seems far away, but for how long?

Emiel Martens, founding director of Caribbean Creativity, serves as the producer and story editor of Yung Kunta, which is currently in pre-production.

Dir: Bas Ackermann | 2022 | The Gambia / The Netherlands | narrative short | 20-30 min.

Blipster Chronicles is a feature-length documentary showing the lives and times of Afro creatives in the Netherlands. Blipsterism is a state of mind of black youngsters between their twenties and thirties who are alternative, independent, creative and love art and artistic expression. This subculture originated as a counter-voice to mainstream art. Blipsters are more or less the dandies of the 2000s, people who see art as a necessity to express who they are. Blipsters, literally Black Hipsters, have become increasingly visible in Dutch society. In Blipster Chronicles, director Noami Wills powerfully captures their stories; stories that are key to change the outsider representation of black people and celebrate the strength of the black creative community.

Caribbean Creativity works as a story editor on Blipster Chronicles, which is expected to receive its premiere in 2022.

Dir: Naomi Wills | 2022 | Nederland | Documentary

Interview about Blipster Chronicles  |  Facebook Page Blipster Chronicles