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On Curacao, black and white islanders lead separate lives. A management course for an Antillean supermarket staff rakes up the colonial past they haven’t come to grips with.

Owing to its climate and crystal-clear sea, Curacao is a popular holiday destination for the Dutch. Some even by a villa in a resort. But they hardly ever integrate with the local Antillean population. The Dutch meet each other at parties and on the golf course. Mutual contact is awkward.
In the Albert Heijn Zeelandia supermarket in Willemstad, this is plain to see. The staff reacts half-heartedly and passive to advice and guidelines. Fine employees don’t seem really interested to make promotion. The surprised supermarket manager sends the white management and black staff off to a course with the motto 'Why doesn’t an Antillean want to be a manager?' Then it turns out that more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery and 50 years after the colonial era, they still haven’t come to grips with the past. Antilleans still grow up with the idea of being inferior to Europeans.
Archive text and footage (for example, of the deployment of marines against Shell workers in 1969) painfully illustrate how the Netherlands have treated their Antillean citizens.

Credits

Executive producer
Script
Sound editing
Production company
Zeppers Film & TV
TV company
NTR TV
Distributor NL
Cinema Delicatessen

Title: Curaçao
Year: 2010
Duration : 1 hour, 15 minutes
Category: Long Documentary
Edition: NFF 2011

Gouden Kalf nominees

Other awards

Prijs v.d. Nederlandse Filmkritiek (2011)
Prijs v.d. Nederlandse Filmkritiek (2011)

NFF Archive

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