Af­ter a suc­cess­ful pre­miere in Toron­to and Bar­ba­dos, the sem­i­nal doc­u­men­tary For­ward Home: The Pow­er of the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra, de­buted in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name yes­ter­day.The doc­u­men­tary is based on two years re­search by renowned econ­o­mist and cre­ative in­dus­tries spe­cial­ist, Dr Kei­th Nurse and his re­search team at the Shri­dath Ram­phal Cen­tre, UWI, Bar­ba­dos.The 50-minute doc­u­men­tary, which is fund­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Re­search Cen­tre, Ot­tawa, Cana­da was filmed by award-win­ning Trinidad-based pro­duc­er/di­rec­tor Lisa Wick­ham and di­rec­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy, Shel­don Fe­lix.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Nurse, who was al­so the ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the film, "The doc­u­men­tary helps to map the con­tri­bu­tion of the Di­as­poric econ­o­my and specif­i­cal­ly Di­as­poric tourism to Caribbean economies. In that re­gard Suri­name is an ex­cel­lent case study be­cause of the rel­a­tive size of the Di­as­poric econ­o­my in Suri­name."In many re­spects the key dri­ver of the Suri­namese econ­o­my is re­lat­ed to Di­as­poric flows in trav­el and tourism, re­mit­tances, trade and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions."For­ward Home: The Pow­er of the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra was shot in nine coun­tries across the globe and is based on the re­search project Strate­gic Op­por­tu­ni­ties in Caribbean Mi­gra­tion.The 50-minute doc­u­men­tary film re­veals the eco­nom­ic pow­er of the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra liv­ing in glob­al cities: the sig­nif­i­cance of the con­tri­bu­tion to their home­land as trav­el­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs.The pre­miere in Suri­name was host­ed by In­tEnt, Suri­name.