Free movement of labour. Yeah, right!

A documentary which debunks the myth of a unified Caribbean, gives voice to the voiceless CARICOM migrants who speak about their difficult migrant experiences while offering alternate ways of thinking about Caribbean integration through interviews with creative thinkers.

WRITER/DIRECTOR Annalee Davis interviews CARICOM migrants who have risked their own security by moving within the Caribbean in an attempt to improve their livelihoods while fleeing their homeland/failed nation state. Davis looks at events such as Terrible Tuesday when large numbers of legitimate Caribbean visitors were denied entry at the border of another Caribbean country. ON THE MAP contrasts the image of a visitor’s paradise with the reality of Caribbean living. The documentary functions as an intervention into the CSME initiative’s top down approach, challenging its lack of public information about social policy issues and education about the integrative process. Davis gives space to prominent creative minds who allow us to think more positively about this historic integrative movement, while contributing their thoughts on what it means to be a Caribbean person and
what it means to be an integrated region.

Interwoven between the interviews are more poetic, lyrical moments which expose the complexities, elegance, poverty, interconnectedness, brutality and splendour of this frustrating, beautiful region. The resulting film project builds in intensity while debunking the myth of a unified Caribbean and revealing the harsher side of lived Caribbean realities. The film functions as an intervention into the regional unification process which has not adequately addressed the social issues that are not divorced from Caribbean people running from their own CARICOM failed nation states. ON THE MAP inverts the images of paradise we have become accustomed to seeing and offers a “bottom up” alternative approach to the “top down” philosophy of the integrative movement. The film can be effectively used as a platform from which to discuss the issues raised. An experimental documentary, ON THE MAP has been beautifully shot in Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad.