Caribbean Cinematic <em>Créolité</em>

Abstract

This article proposes that Caribbean cinema needs to be understood in relation to the concept of creolite , that is, the configuration and constant reinvention—the imaging and imagining—of transnational cultural communities emerging from or historically connected to the Caribbean. Cinematic creolite becomes apparent in the historical revisions, narrative constructions, and cinematic representations that engage Caribbean social, political, and cultural syncretism. In this sense, the formation and constant transformation of Caribbean hybrid cultures can be traced through different narrative and representational tactics, especially those connected to Afro-diasporic communities. As a result, these films rescue and give voice to many of the stories and cultural manifestations that have been suppressed, erased or forgotten by Eurocentric and normative versions of the region’s history.