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

Zwarte Ibis (Black Ibis) is a short poetic film made by Belgo-Dutch grassroots media platform Black Speaks Back portraying a young Black woman’s quest for intimacy in a world where the boundaries between the individual and the collective, the political and the personal, the past and the present, become ever blurrier. The short film is an afro-surrealistic reverie, poetically re-imagining our contemporary conceptions of relationships with the self and with imagined communities through a questioning of historically and culturally imposed views on Black people’s intimate lives in the diaspora.

Caribbean Creativity co-hosted the world premiere of Zwarte Ibis (Black Ibis) in January 2024, and currently serves as the film festival strategist of the film.

Dir: Emma-Lee Amponsah | 2024 | The Netherlands | narrative short | 18 min.

Eating Papaw on the Seashore is a short coming-of-age film produced by the Georgetown Film Festival in collaboration with the Commonwealth Foundation two queer Guyanese boys, who are navigating their feelings in a homophobic society.

Caribbean Creativity was one of the official backers of  Eating Papaw on the Seashore.

Dir: Nikose Layne | 2022 | Guyana | narrative short | 18 min. | Trailer

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.

Gifts from Babylon is an award-winning short film exploring the impact of Africa-EU migration through the lens of a Gambian return-migrant. The film captures the personal and cultural conflicts that arise when Amadou, a young West African, returns to his home country after having lived illegally in the once promised paradise, Europe. Gifts from Babylon shows the return of an African migrant after having lived illegally in Babylon for five years. Babylon is the name that is often used in West Africa when referring to Europe, the idealized destination of many young West Africans when taking the so-called backway, the dangerous and illegal journey to Europe across deserts and high seas. The main character is Amadou, a 28-year old Gambian who took the backway when he was in his early twenties. Back then, he stole money from local gang leader Jimmy to cross the desert by truck and ended up in a smuggler’s boat to Europe. Now, five years later he returns to his home country, to reunite with his family and friends. After a harsh life of hustling on the streets of Italy and the Netherlands, Amadou comes back to the Gambia as a changed man – a bluffing man his family and friends can’t get along with. On top of that, the debts he left behind have not been forgotten by local gang leader Jimmy. While suffering from intense flashbacks of his Babylon life in Europe, and experiencing the poverty and insecurity of African ghetto life all over again, he wonders what has become of him…

Emiel Martens, founding director of Caribbean Creativity, served as the producer and story editor of Gifts from Babylon, which has been shown at 75+ film festivals and other events wordwide and won various awards.

Dir: Bas Ackermann | 2018 | The Gambia / The Netherlands | narrative short | 24 min.

Website Gifts from Babylon  |  Facebook Gifts from Babylon  |  Watch Gifts from Babylon

Onbekend Onbemind (Unknown Unloved, 2015) is a 40-minute documentary on the Surinamese LGBT community in both Suriname and the Netherlands. Homosexuality and other alternative forms of sexuality are still often considered taboo in the (Dutch) Surinamese community. In an attempt to break their silence, this upcoming documentary provides a platform for members of the Surinamese LGBT community to share their personal stories about the difficulties they experience because of their sexuality.

The documentary is an initiative of a group of young filmmakers from Suriname and the Netherlands, including Sabrina Sugiarto (director) and Quincy Lisse (camera and editor). With their film they hope to foster a space for engagement and dialogue around sexual diversity and discrimination of LGBT people in Suriname and the Netherlands.

Caribbean Creativity served as one of the official supporters of Onbekend Onbemind.

Dir: Sabrina Sugiarto | 2015 | The Netherlands / Suriname | Short documentary

Facebook Page Onbekend Onbemind