Sunlit St. John will host two screenings of the film GREENx at Our Place in Coral Bay on Sunday at 6:45 and 8 p.m. Admission is free.
This narrative short film, made last year on St. John with local actors, speaks to the imminent threat of overdevelopment in Coral Bay, according to filmmaker Eric Zucker of Sunlit St. John, his production company.
A blend of fact and fiction, the film reflects a very real situation as the Summer’s End Group continues its 13-year battle to build a mega-yacht marina in Coral Bay.
In recent months, the controversy has become even more complex as the Virgin Islands Coastal Zone Commission has ruled that the marina’s permit has expired, while V.I. Attorney General Gordon Rhea has stated that its permit is still valid.
The urgency of the present situation has led Zucker to make the film available to as wide an audience as possible. It can now be viewed online for free at https://www.sunlitstjohn.com.
When the 40-minute film was completed in January 2025, Zucker planned to enter it into film festivals for short films, where he hoped to win acclaim that would lead to commercial distribution.
But when Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. and the developers renewed their efforts to move the marina forward in August, Zucker realized, “GREENx was made for this. We need to let it go now and let people know about the situation. We need to ‘Save it today or lose it tomorrow.'”
“It’s a question of how autocratic we are,” Zucker continued. “Does the governor wanting it make it happen? Or do we follow the rule of law? It’s not just happening in Coral Bay; it’s the same thing that’s happening in the United States and across the world. It’s a matter of pushing back peacefully as a forward-thinking community.”
The current version of the film (with the addition of an ‘x’ in the title) is slightly different from the one screened on a limited basis last January. “It’s a much tighter cut,” he said.
Zucker has now completed the script for a related film, a full-length feature, that he’s hoping to release by the end of the summer before the elections in 2026. “It’s an attempt to synchronize our territorial status with what’s happening in America today,” he said.
Unlike GREENx, which was “produced on a shoestring,” the next film will “be up to industry standards,” and “We will look widely for the cast,” he said.
Zucker has had plenty of experience as a filmmaker. After graduating from college and working briefly in New York and California, he moved back to St. Thomas, where he was born and raised, around 1987.
“I discovered a thriving commercial production service industry in the islands then,” he said. “In the year before Hurricane Hugo (1989), there were 75 significant productions. A generation of ‘below the line’ film professionals — grips, scouts, and production assistants – learned from the very best as the Virgin Islands became the place for big ads with a tropical or Caribbean element.”
Zucker said he’s hoping to see the Virgin Islands become a center for film production once again.
