When Akley Olton was a young man in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, there was no Vincentian film industry to speak of- no funding body, no production infrastructure, and no screen anywhere in the world showing a story made by someone from his island. In 2012, he stood before the nation’s youth at the SVG National Youth Lecture Series and made a public appeal: the creative industry of St. Vincent and the Grenadines needs to be built, and we must start now. Fourteen years later, his documentary Madulu, The Seaman screens at the AFI Silver Theatre in Washington, D.C., co-presented by Ambassador Louanne Gilchrist and the Embassy of St Vincent and the Grenadines, alongside the Organization of American States, the first time a Vincentian film has been presented at this level on American soil.
A release from Olton’s Island Rebel Media, issued on behalf of the SVG Cultural Ambassador, said the two-night event will bring together the Vincentian diaspora, representatives of OAS member states, Caribbean cultural organisations, and diplomatic guests. Director Olton will deliver opening remarks alongside Ambassador Gilchrist, followed by a film maker Q&A after the June 10 screening. The AFI Silver lobby will feature a curated showcase of Vincentian artisan and culinary producers, including Grenadine Sea Salt and SeaMoss Boss, connecting the film’s themes of coastal heritage and identity to living, exportable products of the nation’s natural world.
The release notes that “George ‘Tall12’ Frederick was one of the last keepers of our traditional sea shanties. His voice and his songs now live forever in Madulu. Together with the Barrouallie community, we are committed to developing the sea shanty tradition as a recognised cultural product of St. Vincent and the Grenadines- and bringing it to the world”.
Madulu, The Seaman is set in Barrouallie, one of the last whaling communities in the Western hemisphere and the oldest European settlement in St. Vincent, founded in 1719. The film follows George “Tall12” Frederick, a legendary harpoon gunner and the last surviving keeper of the Caribbean sea shanty tradition, as he tries to pass his knowledge to his young nephew Amari Murray, who dreams instead of becoming a football star in Paris. Interweaving documentary footage with animated sequences drawn from Amari’s own artwork, the film uses magical realism to explore the tension between ancestral heritage and the pull of globalisation, and asks a question with deep resonance for the blue economy debate: who gets to decide the future of a people’s relationship with the sea?
The film screens alongside Kannan Arunasalam’s Possible Landscapes, an exploration of Caribbean environmental and social realities, together offering the diaspora and international audiences an unprecedented window into the lived complexity of Caribbean life, told entirely from within.
The presentation of Madulu is seen to mark a definitive five-year arc of institutional validation for Olton whose work in 2021 was selected and funded through the IF/Then x Hulu Short Documentary Lab, a competitive global programme for under-represented documentary storytellers.
In 2024 it was acquired by the Criterion Channel, the first time a Vincentian film-maker’s work entered that archive of world cinema, streaming alongside Kurosawa, Sembène, Bergman, and Varda; and in 2026, was presented at AFI Silver Theatre, co-hosted by the SVG Embassy and the OAS, with the film-maker delivering opening remarks alongside the Ambassador of SVG to the USA.
