During this seminar session, film scholar-practitioner Emiel Martens, who was affiliated with KITLV from 2013-2015, will screen his new documentary Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline (34 minutes). The film, much talked about in Jamaica and beyond, is one of the outcomes of his year-long Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, from which he has recently returned. Martens will discuss the film in relation to his work in postcolonial film and tourism studies, Caribbean film and tourism studies, film-based research, participatory storytelling, and activist filmmaking. He will also situate the film within the work of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM) and recent Grammy-winning Jamaican reggae artist Keznamdi, in collaboration with whom the documentary was made.

Beach Inna Bondage is a short documentary 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...

Film maker

Emiel Martens is a Dutch film scholar-practitioner focusing on the interconnections between film, tourism, and empire in the Caribbean, with particular emphasis on Jamaica. He is Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam and served as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, during the academic year 2025-2026. There, he worked, alongside several written publications, on the short film Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline. Martens is also the Co-Founding Director of the Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication (HUCOM) and Erasmus Knowledge Centre for Film, Heritage, and Tourism (FIHETO), as well as the Founding Director of Caribbean Creativity, a non-profit organization dedicated to the production, programming and promotion of Caribbean cinema in Jamaica and the Netherlands.

Discussant

T.b.a.

Moderator

Sikko Visscher, trained as an historian and social scientist, work at KITLV as a research advisor and liaison officer. He is also a board member and Secretary of the Vereniging (Member Association) KITLV.

Format, date, time & venue

The film screening will take place onsite only in the conference room of KITLV, Herta Mohr Building, Room 1.30, Witte Singel 27A, Leiden, on Thursday, 24 September, from 15.30 to 17.00 CET. The Q&A session will be available to join online via Zoom after the screening.

Image

Film still from Beach Inna Bondage.