IN the wake of an internationally produced documentary featuring Port Royal, the Jamaican government is moving to modify agreements for use of the country’s cultural heritage to ensure financial benefits.

The documentary, titled Wicked Pirate City, premiered on US cable station National Geographic last Sunday. Framed within an action-drama focusing on part of the life of one of the country’s most notorious pirates Sir Henry Morgan, the film documented the rise and fall of Port Royal using authentic historical documents from the Jamaica Archives and from an archaeological dive to the underwater city. The dive team also created a 3-D computer model of the ruined city which sank in the massive 1692 earthquake.

Both the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture and the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT) confirmed that the agreement signed with the producers only required them to pay a one-time licence fee of US$750 and that there were no arrangements made for Jamaica to earn royalties from the distribution of the film, nor from the rights of the project.

But, it’s a practice culture Minister Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange said is about to change.

“We benefitted from the exposure because it has generated a lot of interest (but) as I indicated to the National Heritage Trust, in future, documentaries like these, we have to ensure that the country will also benefit from royalties that will accrue. So, I’m reviewing the agreements that are signed when these companies come to Jamaica to do their research and to do documentaries on Jamaica,” she said.

Grange said she was the one, in her capacity as culture minister, who gave the final nod to the National Geographic team, but said she could not pull the plug on the arrangements since the Heritage Trust had already agreed to the licence fee.

She did not discount the exposure the island received on the international stage as a result of the documentary, a repeat broadcast of which will air today at 10:00 am, but said it was not enough given the wealth of our cultural heritage.

“Subsequent (to signing off on the project) I indicated to JNHT and to the Jamaica Archives that we are reviewing all these agreements to ensure that there is an arrangement where we get the royalty from whatever research they do and that we control the rights for Jamaica, if not the Caribbean.

“It’s a template that I’m establishing right across the board, because there was a group that came here to do research on rocksteady (music) and they had to sign an agreement with us and I personally ensured that it included where we would have the rights for Jamaica, possibly for the Caribbean. That we would get one per cent of gross from the distributor, which guarantees that we will get our portion,” she said.

The earnings, she said, would be pooled into a fund to finance and develop cultural projects.

“It is a new direction and it is going to involve our own people understanding that it’s a whole different approach. There is a perception that people are coming to Jamaica to do stories on Jamaica, great! We getting the exposure so we may as well just give them everything. It’s going to take a little time to turn that around and make them see that we have a lot to give, and so we must also benefit,” said Grange.

The minister was speaking with the Sunday Observer at last week’s launch of the two-day Caribbean Meeting on Underwater Cultural Heritage at Morgan’s Harbour Hotel in Port Royal. The focus of the meeting, which was organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural Office groups in Kingston and Havana, Cuba, was to encourage countries in the region to ratify the 2001 Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage.

Executive Director of the JNHT Laleta Davis-Mattis told the Sunday Observer that the agency did get credit at the end of the film and that it received copies of the work as well.

The fact that JNHT only charged Nat Geo a one-time licence fee had everything to do with its status as part of the non-profit National Geographic Society. She stressed, however, that the team was supervised as it filmed.

“When they went in the water we had our representative out there because nobody is allowed to go and dive in the underwater city just like that. In fact, in the video, they actually claimed that they are the only group that has been allowed to dive. There are people who have come, but we just don’t allow people to go out there and dive.”

Thirteen acres of Port Royal, the haven for pirates, privateers and buccaneers during English colonisation of the country, sank in 1692 during a violent earthquake that struck in the month of July. The sunken city and its underwater artefacts are property of the government through the JNHT, which had the site declared protected national heritage on July 22 1999.

According to Grange, “Port Royal has been classified internationally as the most important 17th-century catastrophic find in the western hemisphere and is the only one of its kind in the world.”