Cherisse Moe

There are mo­ments that re­mind us just how deeply the roots of Caribbean and African cul­tures are in­ter­twined, long be­fore we ever cross oceans to meet.

Me­dia pro­duc­er and ex­ec­u­tive Lisa Wick­ham can tell you a mouth­ful about it—like when she ate fu­fu for the first time as a child in the UK, pre­pared by her aunt’s Niger­ian friend. Or years lat­er, while pro­duc­ing The E-Zone tele­vi­sion show, en­coun­ter­ing dif­fer­ent ver­sions of that ex­act sta­ple across the Caribbean—fungee in An­tigua, mel­low coo-coo in Bar­ba­dos, and coo-coo here at home.

And in 2011, when she was in­tro­duced to pap in South Africa. At uni­ver­si­ty in the UK, her Bar­ba­di­an friend start­ed do­ing an African-in­flu­enced dance, trig­ger­ing an in­stant, in­stinc­tu­al re­ac­tion from all the Caribbean na­tion­als in the room.

With­in sec­onds, every­one joined in, mov­ing in sync with­out pri­or chore­og­ra­phy.

Mo­ments like these keep fu­elling Lisa’s work across Africa to­day. This No­vem­ber, South Africa’s East­ern Cape Province will host the in­au­gur­al Be­yond Bound­aries Me­dia Fo­rum (BBMF), pre­sent­ed by Imag­ine Me­dia Africa Lim­it­ed (IMAL) in as­so­ci­a­tion with the East­ern Cape Provin­cial Arts and Cul­ture Coun­cil (EC­PACC).

The fo­rum’s core ob­jec­tives fo­cus on pair­ing vet­er­an pro­duc­ers from ac­tive treaty coun­tries with tal­ent from un­der­utilised na­tions, open­ing doors for in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanc­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, and de­vel­op­ing com­pelling sto­ries from Africa, In­dia and the di­as­po­ra.

Cham­pi­oning this vi­sion is an elite line-up of glob­al am­bas­sadors. They in­clude Hol­ly­wood ac­tress Tatyana Ali; for­mer lo­cal me­dia pro­fes­sion­al Pro­fes­sor Re­nee Cum­mings, now a lead­ing AI gov­er­nance thinker and ethi­cist-in-res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia; and Ghana­ian Shirley Frim­pong-Man­so, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed pro­duc­er and di­rec­tor.

In con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia, Lisa ex­plains how she is carv­ing out this “transat­lantic pro­duc­tion su­per­high­way” to put di­as­po­ra sto­ries on the world stage.

Q: What in­spired you to cre­ate the Be­yond Bound­aries Me­dia Fo­rum (BBMF)?

A: For at least 20 years, I have car­ried the vi­sion of a transat­lantic cre­ative bridge. Back then, ex­or­bi­tant costs and lim­it­ed tech­nol­o­gy made glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble from the Caribbean. But we man­aged to pro­duce The E-Zone TV Se­ries week­ly for eight years, film­ing across the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca, the UK and Eu­rope. On­ly Africa elud­ed us, un­til 2011 when we were in­vit­ed to pro­duce a doc­u­men­tary on im­ple­ment­ing a Trinidad and To­ba­go-styled Car­ni­val as a tool for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in Bela-Bela, Limpopo. That’s when I con­nect­ed with Nozipho Ndi­weni, and the rest is his­to­ry.

What can par­tic­i­pants ex­pect dur­ing the five days of BBMF this No­vem­ber?

An ex­pe­ri­ence that blends the in­ten­tion­al deep­en­ing of re­la­tion­ships with cul­tur­al ex­change and de­lib­er­ate busi­ness align­ment. We aren’t do­ing tra­di­tion­al, pas­sive pan­els, nor is it a train­ing pro­gramme. In­stead, we are cre­at­ing in­ti­mate, high-en­er­gy spaces where sea­soned pro­duc­ers, high-po­ten­tial peers and glob­al me­dia ex­ec­u­tives can sit across from one an­oth­er and map out re­al co-pro­duc­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties. And, of course, we will be in the East­ern Cape, which is beau­ti­ful and cul­tur­al­ly rich.

How can ini­tia­tives like BBMF help lo­cal sto­ries reach in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences?

The BBMF is an ecosys­tem built specif­i­cal­ly for us. A glob­al net­work of ea­ger pro­fes­sion­als sup­ports this ef­fort to open path­ways for our lo­cal nar­ra­tives, in­clud­ing Caribbean sto­ries.

What op­por­tu­ni­ties will BBMF cre­ate for pro­duc­ers from Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean?

Ja­maica is the on­ly Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean coun­try with a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment co-pro­duc­tion treaty. The BBMF is re­al­ly about pair­ing pro­duc­ers from co-pro­duc­tion coun­tries, and we’ve in­clud­ed what we call Strate­gic Na­tions like Nige­ria, Ghana and In­dia. While T&T does not have any of­fi­cial co-pro­duc­tion treaties, I be­lieve that a ris­ing tide lifts all ships. I need­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly—go out and come back in—the same way I did with The E-Zone, which, by the way, was first filmed in Bar­ba­dos.

Why was South Africa cho­sen as the set­ting for this col­lab­o­ra­tion?

I have been cul­ti­vat­ing tru­ly mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships in South Africa for the past 15 years. It’s not a new des­ti­na­tion for me, so South Africa was in­ten­tion­al­ly cho­sen be­cause it is the per­fect an­chor to move from talk to ac­tion. It al­lows us to po­si­tion Africa and the di­as­po­ra at the very cen­tre of a new glob­al me­dia con­ver­sa­tion de­fined by eq­ui­ty, ac­cess and struc­tured co-pro­duc­tion path­ways.

The East­ern Cape is a per­fect lo­ca­tion, of­fer­ing sev­en dif­fer­ent nat­ur­al worlds (bio­mes) and be­ing the home of leg­ends like Man­dela, Steve Biko, Oliv­er Tam­bo and Wal­ter Sisu­lu, to name a few.

How im­por­tant is Caribbean-African sto­ry­telling in to­day’s glob­al me­dia land­scape?

Caribbean-African sto­ry­telling rep­re­sents the ul­ti­mate fron­tier for strate­gic, im­pact-dri­ven col­lab­o­ra­tion. Even as the in­dus­try treats African and di­as­poric nar­ra­tives as iso­lat­ed, par­al­lel tracks, trav­el­ling across the Caribbean, the di­as­po­ra and Africa, I have found we are more con­nect­ed than we know.

This is why build­ing an ecosys­tem like the BBMF is crit­i­cal. I have reached out to a com­mu­ni­ty of like-mind­ed pro­fes­sion­als, many of whom I’ve worked with over the years, who are at the top of their game to be ‘Dis­tin­guished Glob­al Men­tors’. On­ly re­cent­ly did I re­alise al­most 90 per cent of them are of Caribbean roots.

How has that re­la­tion­ship with South Africa evolved over the years?

Oh, we start­ed with the doc­u­men­tary I men­tioned. Then we shift­ed to SOKAFIT, where we trained 26 SOKAFIT coach­es in the sys­tem us­ing so­ca mu­sic ex­clu­sive­ly for a full-body work­out. That’s an­oth­er sto­ry, but suf­fice it to say, they were all en­thralled as they’d nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like it be­fore.

Nozi and I launched Imag­ine Me­dia Africa in 2021, and we’ve been de­vel­op­ing sto­ries that el­e­vate Africa and the di­as­po­ra.

What makes African and Caribbean sto­ries res­onate glob­al­ly?

We are rich with di­verse un­told sto­ries. Un­told; not re­told over and over again.

Do you see this fo­rum be­com­ing a long-term bridge be­tween the Caribbean and Africa’s film in­dus­tries?

Ab­solute­ly!