Research
Art + Writing
Curation
Bibliography
“THIS CARIBBEAN WORLD, SO EVIDENTLY DIVERSE, IN LANGUAGE, IN POLITICS, IN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, ULTIMATELY CONSTITUTES A COMMUNITY”
FRAMING A NEW CARIBBEAN IMAGINARY: A Historical Investigation into the Images Caraïbes Film Festival, 1988-1990.
by MAX DIALLO JAKOBSEN [2022]
The footage opens on a bright and sunlit room filled with the hum of excited chatter. Well-dressed individuals, some standing, others seated in neat rows facing the front of the room, exchange cheek kisses and lively conversation in a symphony of languages – French, Creole, Spanish, English. Potted plants add a splash of green to the already colorful space, which itself mirrors the diversity of the animated crowd. This entire scene is captured on what seems to be hand-held cameras which the attendees sometimes glimpse at but do not seem bothered by. Indeed, this crowd is quite familiar with cameras; many of the guests are filmmakers themselves, or directors, actors, cinephiles, artists, creatives, and public figures. The cameras continue to roam around the room capturing the warm interactions between the attendees but linger on one guest who seems to be the center of attention: Aimé Césaire.
The footage abruptly cuts from the crowd to the panel at the head of the room where a woman is first to speak and addresses the room in French, her voice full of poise and passion:
“I want to welcome you all to Martinique and thank you for your compassion as we deal with all the little problems that could come up during this festival. We are gathered here today in conviviality, and we hope that you will be satisfied, and that, well, this festival – this first festival Images Caraïbes – can be a way for us Caribbeans to meet one another, to exchange, and to communicate during this week, and for the future.”
These remarks, delivered by Suzy Landau, the primary organizer of the event, marked the official opening of the Images Caraïbes film festival in the summer of 1988. Images Caraïbes, a French term which directly translates to ‘Caribbean Images’, represented an important moment for the Caribbean as the most influential and creative minds in the field gathered in Martinique to celebrate a nascent but rapidly growing independent Caribbean film industry.
Images Caraïbes has been celebrated as a cornerstone in the field of Caribbean film studies and as an important moment in the history of Black cinema. Writing in 1992, after having attended the first two editions of the biennial festival, Africanist scholar Mbye Cham describes how Images Caraïbes marked a shift in the field of Caribbean cinema as “the first fully fledged region-wide and diaspora-wide festival of Caribbean films.” Cham recalls how “in spite of (…) enormous resource and logistical limitations,” the festival lived up to its aspiration “as a forum to bring together all Caribbean filmmakers to organize and to advocate measures that would promote and enable more production, distribution, and exhibition within the Caribbean itself.” In particular, Cham points to the creation of the Federation of Caribbean Audiovisual Professionals (FeCaViP), of which the founding manifesto was drafted at the 1990 iteration of the festival, as one of the key products of Images Caraïbes.
In addition to the festival’s important role within the Caribbean, journalist Karen Alexander, writing in anticipation of the third biennial in 1992, reflects on how the festival also marked a shift in global pan-African conversations about film. Alexander outlines how “coming in the wake of pioneering [film] festivals such as Chicago’s ‘Black Light’ and Burkina Faso’s ‘Fespaco’, [Images Caraïbes] shifted emphasis away from the US and Africa, creating in the Caribbean a third ‘home base’ for black filmmakers.” As a further testament to the festival’s importance, Alexander highlights how Images Caraïbes became informally referred to as the ‘Black Cannes’ – a nod toward the Cannes Film Festival held annually in France. However, as Images Caraïbes skyrocketed to the international film stage, it seems that the financial constraints that Cham alluded to -- the “little problems” that Landau apologized for in her opening remarks -- eventually overwhelmed the organizers, as the third edition of Images Caraïbes in 1992 also ended up being its last.
For full text, please email me.