The History of Film and Tourism in Jamaica

The aim of this chapter is to review the foreign 'runaway' productions filmed in Jamaica throughout the twentieth century and up to the present, and to demonstrate the close ties between film and tourism on the island during this period of over 100 years. While recent studies have begun to explore the contemporary connections between film and tourism, relatively little attention has been paid to the historical intersections between the two. Historical studies on the collaboration between the film and tourism industries in the non-Western world are particularly scant. In fact, also separately the film and tourism histories of non-Western countries have received little scholarly notice in comparison to their Western counterparts. Notwithstanding some notable exceptions, Jamaica’s film location history has been hardly dealt with, especially in relation to the island’s tourism industry. This chapter could serve as a starting point to fill this gap.