Harbour Island: Wisdom Keepers — From a Passion Project to the Bahamas International Film Festival

Before focusing more heavily on journalism, I was a filmmaker. When my child was born, I needed a career that would allow me to dedicate more time to her, so I put filmmaking on hold while I established myself as a journalist. Filmmaking, however, never really left me.

In 2024, I returned to footage I had shot years earlier while filming a short fiction project in Harbour Island, The Bahamas. Alongside the fiction film, I had spent time documenting the island and, particularly, some of the people who had lived there for generations.

It had started as a passion project with no clear direction. I had hours of footage sitting on my computer and no idea whether it would ever become a finished film. But when I began editing, I became increasingly fascinated by the people I had filmed, their stories and their connection to the island.

As I worked on the film, my child became curious about what I was doing. She would listen to me editing and eventually learned some of the lines from the fiction project. It became one of those unexpected ways in which filmmaking and motherhood crossed over in my life.

Behind the scenes with Mama Jacqueline in Harbour Island.

I spent many hours bringing the documentary together, including editing, sound design and some animation. It was a labour of love, and at times I wasn’t sure where it was going. Independent filmmaking can be like that: you can put an enormous amount of time, energy and money into something without knowing whether anyone will ever see it.

But I fell in love with the footage all over again.

My greatest hope was simple: that the film would eventually be shown in The Bahamas, where it was made.

Then, one morning, while I was preparing breakfast for my child before school, I opened my emails and found the news I’d been hoping for.

This is a behind the scenes picture of Mama Jacqueline from Harbour Island, and myself.

Harbour Island: Wisdom Keepers had been officially selected for the Bahamas International Film Festival.

The film premiered at the festival in 2024, including a screening on Harbour Island itself — the place where the film was born.

For me, that was particularly meaningful. After years away from filmmaking, a project that had existed mostly on my computer had finally found an audience in the place where it had been made.

The Bahamas International Film Festival