Private Project

Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica's Coastline

Beach Inna Bondage is a short documentary by Kingston-based Dutch filmmaking duo Emiel Martens and Elsie Vermeer in collaboration with the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM) and Grammy-winning Jamaican reggae arist Keznamdi exploring the growing struggle for beach access in Jamaica. Since the 1950s, public access to the island’s beaches has steadily declined, leaving less than one percent of the coastline publicly accessible for Jamaicans. Over the decades, most of Jamaica’s beaches have been captured by private and tourist interests, and particularly since the 2000s large-scale hotel developments have limited beach access for Jamaicans.

This film follows the grassroots movement resisting the privatization of Jamaican beaches by zooming in on three frontline struggles: Bob Marley Beach near Kingston, the Blue Lagoon in the parish of Portland, and Mammee Bay Beach on the island’s North Coast. The interviewees, all Jamaicans, reveal how the 1956 Beach Control Act, which is still in effect today, vests ownership of the foreshore in the Jamaican state (and actually the British Crown) and traces how this colonial-era law, combined with the island’s all-inclusive tourism model, has displaced communities, disrupted livelihoods, and degraded environments. Interwoven with archival footage, news clips, and recordings of protest rallies and court cases, the interviewees situate today’s beach access struggles within Jamaica’s troubled history of land ownership following emancipation and independence. They argue that the island’s tourism industry replicates plantation logic by monopolizing land, concentrating wealth, exporting profits, and, ultimately, marginalizing the people.

Beach Inna Bondage shows that beach access, which is not only an issue in Jamaica but across the Caribbean and beyond, is an urgent matter of historical, economic, social, cultural and environmental justice, raising the question of who the tropical paradise of sun, sand, and sea truly serves, and at what cost...

  • Emiel Martens
    Director
  • Elsie Vermeer
    Director
  • Emiel Martens
    Writer
  • Elsie Vermeer
    Writer
  • Emiel Martens
    Editors
    Welcome to the Smiling Coast, Gifts from Babylon
  • Elsie Vermeer
    Editors
  • Emiel Martens
    Producer
    Welcome to the Smiling Coast, Gifts from Babylon
  • John Fenton
    Sound Designer
  • Bonito 'Don Dada' Thompson
    Graphic Designer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Genres:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    29 minutes 59 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 1, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Jamaica, Netherlands
  • Country of Filming:
    Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Caribbean Creativity
    Sales Agent
    Country: Netherlands
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Emiel Martens, Elsie Vermeer

Emiel Martens is a Kingston-based Dutch film scholar-practitioner focusing on the interconnections between film, tourism, and empire in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. He serves as an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam and currently is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, where he has been working on the documentary series Film Location Jamaica and the short film Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline. Martens is also the Founding Director of Caribbean Creativity, a non-profit organization dedicated to the programming and promotion of Caribbean cinema in the Netherlands, and the (impact) producer of various award-winning films, such as Welcome to the Smiling Coast, Gifts from Babylon, and The Sinking Fringe. Beach Inna Bondage marks his debut as a director.

Elsie Vermeer is a Kingston-based Dutch documentary filmmaker and journalist with a background in visual anthropology. She currently works as a content creator for the Dutch public broadcaster HUMAN, while also developing independent film projects. Her independent work focuses on exposing social inequalities, collaborating closely with her protagonists to tell their stories in an sensative and respectful way. For example, on her most recent short film Who Cares, she explores why undocumented immigrants in Amsterdam are often not receiving the basic healthcare to which they are entitled. Since 2025, Elsie has been based in Kingston, Jamaica, working on several film projects on the island’s history of film, tourism and empire, including Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

As Kingston-based Dutch life and filmmaking partners, our work is shaped by a long-term engagement with Jamaica’s colonial histories and post-colonial realities. Developed in close collaboration with the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM) and Grammy-winning reggae artist Keznamdi, Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline explores the ongoing struggle for beach access, land rights, and environmental justice in Jamaica.

Our film explores how colonial legacies continue to shape access to Jamaica’s coastline through the 1956 Beach Control Act and the prioritization of private and tourism interests. Through the voices of residents, advocates, historians, and environmentalists, the documentary reveals how these systems continue to affect local communities, economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally.

Grounded in long-term relationships and grassroots struggles surrounding contested coastal spaces such as Bob Marley Beach, the Blue Lagoon, and Mammee Bay Beach, our film aims to connects present-day struggles to longer histories of plantation colonialism and land ownership. Combining interviews, archival material, protest footage, and drone imagery of Jamaica’s coastline, the documentary places these local struggles within broader global debates on tourism, displacement, environmental vulnerability, and the lasting legacies of colonial power and privilege.