LAMAN DI NORT
Photo by my maternal grandfather, Benjamin Gomes Casseres, from around the nineteen forties.
The sea on the North Coast of Curacao is always rough, due to the constant NE direction of the tradewinds that splash the water against the rugged rocks. Then the winds cross the narrow island towards its South Coast, blowing the waves away, so that the sea there is calm, with white sandy beaches in intimate coves.
The wild North Coast is featured again and again in the films my parents, Frank and Tita Mendes Chumaceiro, made.
There is an early film, from 1951, called "Life and Water" - with a script by the writer Sini van Iterson, where different stages of life are represented by different bodies of water. Infancy is paired with the tiny spring at San Pedro, childhood with the playful waves on the South Coast. And it is only natural that young adulthood should show two lovers passionately embracing at this stormy coast.
photo by my grandfather Benjamin Gomes Casseres - from the nineteen forties
The last film my parents made "Curahits", showcases various local performing artists. The poet Pierre Lauffer is filmed standing at the North Coast, reciting his poem "Laman di Nort", that depicts the angry sea hurling itself against the rock, fighting it, punching it, beating it with all its violent force - but the rock takes it all in stride, and does not utter a word.
"Rots and Water" takes you to all the wild places on the island, and especially to my favorite nature spot, Boka Tabla. There you go down into a cave between those rugged rocks, and when you turn a corner, you are confronted with the thundering waves rolling into the cave with a tremendous force through its wide, sunlit opening, and breaking, one after the other, without ever taking a rest.
There is a peaceful silence in that cave, despite the deafening sound of the waves, and I could sit there for hours, in the spray, becoming a shadow in the darkness against the light at the other end, a part of the cave, like a rock, or the shipwrecked boat that was washed in by the waves, years ago.
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photo by my grandfather Benjamin Gomes Casseres - from the nineteen forties