12186: Low-budget films are the rage in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Low-budget films are the rage in Haiti

By Michael Norton
The Associated Press
Posted May 28 2002

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti · A new visual art form is budding in Haiti, known
mostly for its naif art and flamboyantly painted buses known as "tap-tap"
jitneys.

Low-budget movies have become the rage, sometimes drawing bigger audiences
than Hollywood blockbusters such as Planet of the Apes and Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone.

"Our cinema is embryonic, but full of potential," said filmmaker Arnold
Antonin, 57. "Haitians don't want to be invisible. They want to see
themselves and their problems portrayed on the screen."

Perhaps Antonin's most heralded work is Courage of Women, a 2000 documentary
honored at the Cannes Film Festival that lovingly portrays the harsh lives
of two sisters. They break rocks and sell them to builders to support their
families, including unemployed young male relatives who consider their
drudgery demeaning.

After a popular uprising toppled the stifling 29-year dictatorship of
Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, Antonin returned to his homeland
after 23 years' exile in Europe and Venezuela.

He had already made several 16mm documentaries on political subjects. But
Haiti, in an economic downturn since 1980, was too poor technologically to
produce 16mm films. Facilities to buy, develop and edit film still don't
exist in the Caribbean nation.

So filmmakers have turned to video, which is cheaper.

In the past 15 years, about 20 feature-length video movies have been shown,
drawing crowds despite their poor lighting, awkward camera work, amateur
actors and stilted French dialogue. Most are lurid domestic dramas and love
stories with names like Afraid to Love and The Choice of My Life.

Antonin made several documentaries, four about Haitian artists, before he
tackled his first feature-length film last year. With a script by Haiti's
most prominent novelist, Gary Victor, the satiric comedy Piwoli and the
Gangster won critical and popular acclaim.

But the film, like its characters, faced hurdles. The cultural center run by
Antonin was burglarized. Equipment he had accumulated over 10 years was
stolen. The self-financed movie cost about $25,000, and the actors and
technicians, as well as Antonin and Victor, were not paid. Though the film
was shot in two weeks, it took three months to edit because of daily
electrical outages.

Still, at its release in February in adjacent rooms of the Imperial Theater,
Haiti's premier movie house, 350 people watched Piwoli and the Gangster
while only 50 opted for Planet of the Apes, which opened at the same time.
Over two months, Antonin's movie drew 30,000 moviegoers; Harry Potter drew
10,000 over a similar period.

"It makes me laugh and kills my stress. It is a true image of Haitian
foibles," said Gilbert Saint-Fleury, 25, who saw Piwoli 10 times.

Piwoli is a former soldier who lives in suburban comfort but whose
boastfulness leaves his dreamy wife cold.

One day, a gunman holds her up and drives away in her husband's new car,
leaving her stunned, and in love. She is impressed by his impeccable French
and the piercing eyes visible through his mask.

Piwoli, mourning the loss of his car and frustrated by his wife's
indifference, places an ad in the paper defying the gangster to come and
steal her too.

Disguised as a U.S. Embassy employee, the gangster turns up at the Piwoli
home, hoodwinks the husband, puts sleeping powder in the couple's drinks and
struts off with the unconscious wife slung over his shoulder.

When the scene ended in a moviehouse in St. Marc, on Haiti's west coast, an
engaged but angry audience rose to its feet shouting: The moviegoers found
Piwoli's humiliation unacceptable and threatened to boycott Antonin
productions if Piwoli wasn't given a chance to take revenge.

"After that experience, we added To Be Continued' to the end," Antonin said.


_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx