The Caribbean Cinematic
I knew I wanted to work on a final project that tackled distribution in the Caribbean in some way. Initially, I wanted to focus on Jamaica (which I will discuss in one of my blog posts), but in creating the archive (another blog post), I realized I wanted to include the other islands in this project. The discussion in class helped me realize that a website was a good way to explore some of the themes and ideas that were swirling in my head.
My area of study for my Masters program is “Advancing the Storytelling of the Black Diaspora” and for my thesis, I plan to write a business plan for a production and distribution studio. While I haven’t made much headway into the exact structure of that company, I already knew what I wanted to name it, hence the title of the website, Likkle Tallawah Productions. The title comes from a Jamaican proverb, “We likkle but we tallawah”. In Standard English, it essentially translates to “We are small, but mighty” which means Jamaica is a small country with a huge global impact. I wanted to harness that sentiment for my company because I plan to focus on uplifting early career marginalized creators, specifically Black creators, and bring their work more into the mainstream. While initially I will begin working with creators in America, it’s my biggest hope that my company can expand globally and bring films from across the Black diaspora to the mainstream conscious.
Working on the website has been a labor of love. In just creating these two pages, I’ve learned that there is so much that goes into just aggregating sources into one place for people to find them. I used our class archive and your syllabus and separated them by country. Each map has a link to a page with the list of films mentioned that correspond to that specific country. Each film is identified by its name and year of release and any platforms where it can be watched and is accompanied by a trailer (in some cases the full film when a trailer was not able to be found) so those unfamiliar with the films can get a glimpse at them to see if they’re interested in watching them. If I had more time, I would’ve liked to put each film’s logline to accompany it, but I also felt that was difficult for the more obscure/more difficult to access films, especially those which I hadn’t seen before (which was most of the films in the archive).
My favorite part of creating this website, aside from the creative aspect of stylizing the website, was researching the streaming platforms created in the Caribbean. I found a lot of sites I’d never heard of before and some I had. Each platform had its own niche and seemed to carry a fairly decent catalog of films made by local filmmakers. I’m excited to engage with some of these films over my Winter break and hopefully get to add them to my archives and continue to grow them.
As I continue to learn and engage with work of the diaspora, I hope to expand my archives to include more countries and more films. I hope to balance out the archives I currently have, for example adding more films in the Dominican Republic and Suriname pages, as well. I’d also like to continue writing blog posts and hopefully have other contributors, specifically those from local filmmakers and creatives, so more people can learn about film across the diaspora from the mouths of those living there.
This has been a fun project and an exciting and enriching class. Thank you for a great semester.