Beach Inna Bondage Screening
September 12 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT
Presented by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival
Featuring
- Tao Leigh Goffe (JA)
- Devon Taylor (JABBEM)
In conversation with Dantae Elliott (JA)
The beach, despite its early setting in the Caribbean as the port of arrival marking an indefinite future of terror and toil, in the 20th century became synonymous with freedom and rest. It now adorns postcards and holiday brochures, promising beauty and escape. For many Caribbean communities, the shoreline has recently returned to a site of restriction, displacement and loss, this time echoing the peril that modern tourism models bring. As the industry expands, private development reshapes coastlines, climate change accelerates erosion and rising seas, and access to the beach is increasingly a prize commodity. What was once publicly accessible is too often treated as the foray of the exclusive and wealthy.
The questions raised by Beach inna Bondage extend far beyond the Caribbean. They form the top tenors of cries in Brooklyn, where neighbourhoods built by generations of working-class and immigrant communities are being systematically toppled by aggressive gentrification, rising costs and the gradual erosion of belonging. Though the landscapes differ, the underlying struggle is strikingly familiar. Who has the right to remain? Who benefits from redevelopment? What happens when the places that shape our identities are transformed beyond recognition?
In partnership with Grist, BCLF presents the New York launch of the documentary ‘Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastlines’, bringing together important voices to examine the shared forces of dispossession unfolding across islands and cities alike. This conversation considers the beach as a public commons, cultural inheritance and a measure of whose lives are valued while it investigates the power and legal structures that make the onslaught possible. It considers stewardship, the implications of class, the politics of land, the future of our shared spaces and the collective work required to protect them.
RSVP at bklyncbeanlitfest.org
