Kareem J.Mortimer

Kareem J. Mortimer emerged in the course of the 2000s to become one of The Bahamas’ most prominent Bahamian filmmakers, curators and video artists. Following a series of documentary and TV shorts in the early 2000s, Mortimer won plaudits in 2010 for his debut narrative feature, CHILDREN OF GOD: an LGBTQ+ romance focusing on the love between two men and the homophobia they encounter in Caribbean contexts. Following the family comedy WIND JAMMERS (2011), Mortimer returned to questions of marginalisation and violence with his multiply award-winning CARGO (2017). The film tells stories of people trafficking and migrant flight between Haiti and the southern US; it won five awards and had theatrical releases in ten countries across the Caribbean Basin, as well as at least ten additional countries including China.

Mortimer is notable for a career that moves between feature filmmaking, documentary and experimental practice, programming and curatorship. CARGO was preceded in 2013 by the experimental short film PASSAGE 2013. The film develops themes that Mortimer would later draw on in CARGO; but the film’s looser narrative framing allows his images to speak more poetically of his migrant protagonists’ experience of violence and loss. Documentary work includes studies of the disability rights campaigner Michael Wells (I AM NOT A DUMMY, 2008); Caribbean drag artists (SHE, 2012); the stalking of a young woman by a homeless man (CHANCE, 2002); and the award-winning THE STORY OF HAROLD CHRISTIE (2023). Active on lecture and festival circuits across the Caribbean and US, Mortimer is also a prominent advocate for Bahamian independent film; he served for five years as the curator of film at the independent Island House Cinema in New Providence, The Bahamas, and for three years as creative director of The Island House Film Festival. He found time during that period to develop a further profile as a prolific video artist. Mortimer has staged video installations in museums across the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean, with titles including his exploration of transgender lives WITNESS (2016), and his meditation on black/white racial identities THE NAKED TRUTH (2014).

Passage (2013)

Award-winning short centring around a group of Haitians locked in the hold of a fishing vessel and smuggled through the Bahamas into the United States.