Caribbean Creativity on WCA

Caribbean Creativity is a partner of WCA since 2013, and will of course be part of this anniversary edition again. This time with an Afrolijk weekend, with a screening of the Ghanaian film The Burial of Kojo on Friday 23 August, in the presence of director and conceptual artist Blitz Bazawule, and a sparkling closing party with fine afrobeats on Saturday. We asked founder Emiel Martens about his favourite WCA moments and about the state of affairs of Caribbean cinema.

With a thousand and one things. I teach Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the academic year is currently ending there. That mainly means that I am reviewing exams and theses. I am also working at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) on a multi-year research project on film tourism in the Caribbean, so that keeps me off the street. In addition to my work at the UvA and EUR, I am also busy setting up film productions and film events.

Together with Dutch filmmaker Bas Ackermann and the Gambian production company State of Mic, we made a short social impact film last year, Gifts from Babylon, about migration and return migration, which is currently touring film festivals at home and abroad. As a producer, I try to get the film programmed as much as possible - and sometimes I can travel to a film festival myself to represent the film. We are also working on a few new film plans that are taking place both in the Netherlands and in the Gambia.

But you probably know me mostly from organising film screenings. This summer I organise quite a lot again, for example at Pllek in Amsterdam and also, for the first time, at LantarenVenster in Rotterdam. Recently I have been asked more and more to organise film screenings, very cool. And at World Cinema Amsterdam we will be hosting the closing party again!

I was doing a PhD research into Jamaican film history more than ten years ago and lived in Kingston for a while. There I spoke with many Jamaican filmmakers whose films we didn't usually see in the Netherlands. I then decided to set up a foundation with the exact aim of bringing Caribbean films to the Netherlands and thus contributing to the diversity of film stories in the Netherlands and the diversity within the global film industry more generally. In addition, I wanted to serve a public or, better, a community that does not often see their cultural identity, social reality and political position represented on the big screen, especially the Caribbean community in the Netherlands.

We started showing Caribbean films in bars and festivals in Amsterdam and along the way we got the chance to programme films in almost all arthouse film theatres in Amsterdam, from Kriterion to FC Hyena and from De Balie to, of course, Rialto. Since 2014, we regularly programme Latin American and African films in addition to Caribbean films that otherwise cannot be seen on the silver screen in the Netherlands. In total, we have organised around one hundred film screenings in ten years.

I think the best thing is that in ten years we have moved from more or less impovised to professional screenings in film theatres, and that we have turned out to be a sustainable organisation that has built up a good right to exist and a good following. I think we are pretty much the only organisation in the Netherlands that screenes Caribbean films on a regular basis, all without funding.

But the best thing is of course the appreciation of both the filmmakers and the visitors for showing the films - and sharing stories that are so worthy to be seen but still too often skipped. A full room with a diverse audience always does me a lot of good, but also a less filled room, when there are good reactions and there is good conversation after the film. I ultimately see it as my job to encourage ethnic-cultural diversity and socio-political inclusion and I think Caribbean Creativity contributes to that, no matter how small.

A new generation of Caribbean filmmakers has really emerged. Facilitated by the rise of digital technology, as well as by the growth of (access to) film infrastructure in the Netherlands and abroad, Caribbean youngsters have increasingly taken matters into their own hands in the past ten years and made professional films in a DIY manner.

Storm Saulter is a good example of this. This young Jamaican filmmaker returned to the island in 2006 after completing the film school in Los Angeles to make films there. A few years later, in 2010, Storm founded New Caribbean Cinema, a movement to create opportunities for young Caribbean film makers to make films by working together. He calls it a "by any means necessary" approach to film making. The following year he himself produced his first feature film, Better Mus ’Come, which we were able to present at WCA in 2013 as part of the Inside Jamaica programme that I co-curated. Storm was also present. I also did a long interview with him, which was published in a special edition about Caribbean cinema. And we also shot a television item about New Caribbean Cinema, which you can find here.

Storm has just released his second feature film, Sprinter, which we hope to present in the Netherlands soon. The range of his films is quite unique, but the DIY method of filmmaking is actually not entirely. The Surinamese-Dutch film maker Pim de la Parra has proven that previous generations of Caribbean filmmakers also made films "by any means necessary". I also interviewed him for that special edition.

Better Mus' Come 

I remember many moments, but for me the Inside Jamaica programme was very special, also because it was the starting signal. In addition to Better Mus ’Come, we also featured Songs of Redemption by Miquel Galofre, one of my favourite filmmakers, and some Jamaican short films. I remember that there was a really good vibe in Rialto back then - and a very good reggae party! Two years later we curated the Cine Caribe programme together, which was also very cool. We were then able to screened nine feature films, three documentaries and ten short films from the Caribbean and we closed the programme with a Cuban fiesta. I have never seen so many people, and so many diverse people, in Rialto. The roof went off pretty well, a highlight.

Two other screenings that have really stayed with me are the screenings of Afripedia in 2017 and the screenings of Yardie earlier this year. Both screenings were pre-announcements of the approaching film festival and both times the main auditorium was completely full. That is always very nice to experience.

An evening is a success for me when the film reaches a beautiful audience, which can be a large audience but also a smaller audience that is touched by the film, especially if it touches their own identity. In addition, creating a space in which everyone feels comfortable, both during and after the film, is very important to me. The parties after the film are also intended to create just that- and I think it is great to see if that succeeds, that you see that people are enjoying themselves and that they can express their cultural and social identity, that they can be themselves.

I also always find it very cool to work together, to create beautiful things with creative people. With Reggae Vibrations, for example, I work with Munira Blom, with Ciesta with Eduardo Furia and with Afrolijk with Jossintha Wielzen and Sanne-Fleur Willemsen - all beautiful people. And I also appreciate the collaborations with the venues, and the collaboration with Rialto in particular. Creating together, that gives me energy and gives me satisfaction.

I don't sleep very much, so I'd rather you not wake me up. But if you do call, then please for a film that matters. I don't necessarily have a favourite film, but you can always wake me up for a film that tells a story with the intention to make the world a little better. As the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Aghozi once said so beautifully: “Stories matter. Many stories together matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” And films can do just that.