HAITI NEWS & CULTURE
Haiti films
Atis-Rezistans: The Sculptors of Grand Rue
Leah Gordon, 2005, 35 min.
Grand Rue is the main avenue that runs north-south through downtown Port-au-Prince. At the avenue's southern end, is a close-knit community with a historical tradition of arts, crafts, music, and religious practice, the members of which draw on the refuse of the nearby car repair district to create powerful sculptural collages.
Dreamers
Jorgen Leth, 2002, 55 min.
Danish director Jorgen Leth, captures with great integrity the spirituality and other-worldliness of elderly Haitian painters. The film presents the range of Haitian painting in style and subject matter - some are "voodoo" painters, others protestant, some paint historical subjects, others paint imaginary visions, some capture everyday life.
Art Naif And Repression in Haiti
Dir. Arnold Antonin, 1976, 52 min.
This movie, winner of the jury's special prize in 1976 at the Festival de la Francophonie in New Orleans, denounces the commercial, political and ideological exploitation of naive art by the Duvalier dictatorship. It is also a cry for artistic freedom and a call for artists' involvement in the fight for freedom in general.
Jacques Roumain: La Passion d' Un Pays
Dir. Arnold Antonin, 2008, 114 min.
This feature film presents the work and troubled life of one of the most famous Haitian writers and politicians. It is astonishing to see how the problematic issues he embraced in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century still threaten Haiti's stability a hundred years later.
