Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Jane Bryce (bio) If a close-up is a tight shot that focuses on detail to the exclusion of background, is it possible to have a close-up of something as amorphous and sprawling as Caribbean cinema? Ongoing attempts to define it seem only to testify to the simultaneously centrifugal/centripetal dynamic of Caribbean culture itself—the push-me, pull-you tension between national borders and diasporic connections, between official institutions (all those international airports stuck in out-of-the-way places and named for past prime ministers) and multifarious unofficial pathways and signs of diversity that sometimes jostle for attention and sometimes choose to stay out of sight (like Haitian veve, intricate Vodun symbols drawn in powder on the ground later to be obliterated, or pre-Colombian Kalinago petroglyphs and Taíno paintings hidden in caves). The very first (hence foundational) issue of Black Camera carried an article by Gilberto Blasini proposing that "Caribbean cinema needs to be understood in relation to the concept of créolité," which "not only documents the continual transformations of the Caribbean but also reinvents its geocultural scope by expanding beyond the Antilles to include … the southeastern coast of the United States, and the northeastern rim of South America (including Brazil), as well as the Caribbean diaspora's host countries (UK, France, Canada)."1 A broad sweep, indeed. The five films chosen to illustrate this Caribbean cinema—all made between 1976 and 1992—are symptomatic of a view of Caribbean (or should that be diasporic, or post-slavery?) cinema shaped by a particular aesthetic—one that privileges a nostalgic and mythic construction of the past. These films—Daughters of the Dust (dir. Julie Dash, 1991, United States), set on the Gullah Islands of Carolina, Quilombo (dir. Carlos Diegues, 1984, Brazil), set in Brazil, along with La última cena / The Last Supper (dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1976), from Cuba, Almacita di desolato / Almacita, Soul of Desolato (dir. Felix de Rooy, 1986) from Curacao, and Rue cases nègres / Black Shack Alley (dir. Euzhan Palcy, 1983) from Martinique—are foundational texts of revisionary [End Page 123] history. But that isn't all there is to Caribbean cinema, as one contributor to the present Close-Up attests. According to Antonio Enrique González Rojas, "The idea of Cuban cinema among world audiences and film critics is limited to historical feature films and documentaries from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, with romantic perspectives of Cuban social and political reality," and as a result, he sees his role as being to correct this misconception. This Close-Up, which sees Caribbean cinema as a cross-border dialogue, is not about to dispute its geocultural extensiveness or the centrality of créolité to a Caribbean aesthetic. But it may raise a few questions: Is the Caribbean more than a set of tropes that can be traced to different locations? Isn't it also a physical space occupied by gendered and racialized bodies, a space of complicated and specific histories, of landscapes imprinted with memories of peculiar forms of violence and resistance? But if it is, where does that space begin and end? In 2015, the Jamaica-based cultural journal Caribbean Quarterly published a special issue, Visions and Revisions: Film/in(g) the Caribbean.2 In this Close-Up of sorts, the Caribbean incorporated Haiti, Jamaica, Curacao, Cuba, and Trinidad, alongside Francophone and Anglophone diasporas—a polylingual Caribbean, that nonetheless stayed within the ambit of the Antilles and its diasporic offshoots. Pondering what constitutes Caribbean cinema, one of its authors puts her finger on the push-me, pull-you button when she asks: "How can one project the specificities of a nation and go beyond imagined boundaries?"3 The contributions to the present Close-Up all, to some extent, address this question. Whether in terms of form and genre, aesthetic and audience, signifying or, as Caribbean philosopher Sylvia Wynter puts it, "counter-signifying," they explore the tension between nation and imagination—between borders and transnational relationalities, but also between official versions of history and unofficial stories that testify to another reality. This is why, no doubt, close-ups are useful. In this Close-Up, the Caribbean that comes into...