The very first <strong>Caribbean</strong> <strong>Beat</strong> cover featured not a palm-fringed shore, nor a dazzling Carnival costume, nor a colourful tropical bird <strong>—</strong> those were all still to come <strong>—</strong> but a portrait of the filmmaker Euzhan Palcy. That cover was a declaration that the new magazine would pay serious attention to the <strong>Caribbean</strong>’s arts and culture, and our region’s extraordinary creative and intellectual talent. Writing in our 75th issue, back in September/October 2005, <strong>Caribbean</strong> <strong>Beat</strong>’s founding editor Jeremy Taylor explained why this photo of Palcy “set the agenda”: 1 • Martiniquan film director Euzhan Palcy Spring 1992 Photo by Ph. Giraud/Sygma I still have a soft spot for the very first cover we published, back in January 1992. Looking back at it now, it’s hard to see why. The tones are grey, the subject is stiff and formal, and there’s a dated feel to the image. The photo is not even by a <strong>Caribbean</strong> photographer (in 1992 we could not afford to commission a cover image, and had to make do with a studio PR photo). Since 1992, many of our covers have been more colourful, more appealing, more popular. There have been beaches and boats, beautiful people, landscapes and seascapes, sports heroes, singers, musicians, Carnival people, striking graphics and paintings. I like them all, and feel proud of many of them. Yet that very first cover somehow managed to announce what <strong>Caribbean</strong> <strong>Beat</strong> was going to be all about. Hardly anyone recognised Palcy. Few people had seen her brilliant movie Rue Cases Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley), though it’s a classic of the independent film world. Nobody associated her with the 1989 MGM release A Dry White Season, where she directed Donald Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, and Marlon Brando (who appeared free, because he liked what she was doing). Nobody knew this was a woman who had Robert Redford and François Truffaut as professional “godfathers.” Why (that cover asked) is <strong>Caribbean</strong> filmmaking not taken seriously? Why do we think of the <strong>Caribbean</strong> as a romantic backdrop for other people’s movies, not for making our own? We saw Euzhan Palcy as a formidable <strong>Caribbean</strong> woman who had broken through ethnic and gender stereotypes into a notoriously difficult industry and had produced some powerful work. She was interested in making <strong>Caribbean</strong> films, not perpetuating <strong>Caribbean</strong> stereotypes. It was exactly the sort of achievement that <strong>Caribbean</strong> <strong>Beat</strong> wanted to discover and celebrate. So that very first <strong>Caribbean</strong> <strong>Beat</strong> cover did not depict a wonderful golden beach, or a sunset, or a luxurious villa. It made the statement that the <strong>Caribbean</strong> is more than its beaches, more than rum punch and partying, wonderful and liberating though those pleasures are. The <strong>Caribbean</strong> is not just a romantic backdrop: it has successes and achievements of its own, world-class people in sport and science, music and business, writing and the visual arts. And we wanted our readers to know about them too. Since then . . . When Euzhan Palcy appeared on the cover of our Spring 1992 issue, she was already, at the age of thirty-four, recognised as an icon of <strong>Caribbean</strong> filmmaking. Her 1983 debut, Rue Cases Nègres (adapted from Alfred Zobel’s novel), had earned her a César Award <strong>—</strong> the French equivalent of an Oscar <strong>—</strong> and a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, plus a dozen other international awards. The screenplay <strong>—</strong> which she started while still a film student in Paris <strong>—</strong> had won the admiration of famed French director François Truffaut, and Aimé Césaire, the celebrated Martiniquan poet and mayor of Fort-de-France, had helped secure the production budget. Rue Cases Nègres was a rare example of a film almost immediately recognised as a classic. Despite this early success, Palcy’s second project was six years in the making. The subject she’d set her heart on <strong>—</strong> an adaptation of South African writer André Brink’s anti-apartheid novel A Dry White Season <strong>—</strong> proved difficult to raise financial support for. Still, Palcy was determined to make a politically hard-hitting film. She even travelled to South Africa, pretending continued on page 42 40 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
“I will never compromise in a way that distorts history,” says Euzhan Palcy Thierry van biesen WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 41