In A Dream to Conjure, Yasmine Espert considers the hopes and imaginings of Caribbean film from its beginnings. Focusing on narratives of migration from the late 1980s to the late 2010s, Espert attends to the restorative and life-affirming practices that diasporic Caribbean filmmakers conjure to assert their wellbeing, sovereignty, and sense of relation to the Caribbean. She examines how their embodied, aesthetic, and political practices set precedents for organizing efforts and continue a tradition of resistance to colonial extraction. Drawing from her own conversations and collaborations with these artists, she elevates the study with a deeper reflection on what it is like to create in, and about, lands that many said had no place in the film industry. Through an anticolonial, queer-of-color framework, Espert engages the films, dreams, and acts of Caribbean creators as multisensory, time-bending forms of collective engagement that defy colonial logic and prioritize those most vulnerable under regimes of oppression.

Yasmine Espert is Assistant Professor of Visual Art and Art History at York University.

Preface. Caribbean
Cinema: Revisiting Precious and Difficult Dreams ix
Introduction. Returns: The Dreams Are Already Here 1
1. Memoir: Practicing Happiness at the Shoreline 23
2. Ritual: Channeling Ancestors and Archives in 16 mm 59
3. Craft: Living What Your Story Requires 111
Conclusion. Social Dreaming—A Reason to Convene 151
Acknowledgments 169
Appendix. Mahadai Das, “They Came in Ships” 173
Notes 177
Bibliography 213
Index