keywords: independent film researcher, programmer and producer
Emiel Martens is a film lecturer, researcher, programmer and producer. He graduated cum laude in both Media Studies and Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam, was a visiting scholar at the Caribbean Institute for Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and holds a Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation, entitled 'Welcome to Paradise Island: The Rise of Jamaica's Cine-Tourist Image, 1891-1951', was the first study of Jamaica's early film history and its relations to the Caribbean island's early tourism history.
Emiel has been working as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam since 2004, where he is an Assistant Professor in Postcolonial Film Studies. His research interests include postcolonial (film) studies, popular geopolitics, the representation of migration and diversity, creative industries, film tourism, humanitarian communication, and alternative media, with a particular focus on the history, theory and practice of (English-language) Caribbean film and visual culture.
In addition to his positions at the University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Emiel is also the founder and chairman of Caribbean Creativity, a non-profit organization that programs and promotes Caribbean cinema in the Netherlands, co-director of the Expertise Center for Humanitarian Communication, and one of the guests of media production company Gasten in je Gezicht, where he served as producer and story editor of award-winning impact films such as Welcome to the Smiling Coast (2016) and Gifts from Babylon (2018).
