21621: radtimes: Radio Free Haitian (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Radio Free Haitian

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2004-04-28/movies.html/1/index.html

Jonathan Demme's documentary profiles a joyful revolutionary.

April 28, 2004
BY MELISSA LEVINE
feedback@eastbayexpress.com

Every once in a while, you encounter a person who seems to have been born
under an urgent, righteous star -- a person who is both a fiery activist
lit with the passion of his convictions and a dramatic storyteller who
naturally occupies a place in the public eye. When this person enters a
room, he doesn't draw attention away from others and toward himself;
instead, he infuses the entire place, and everyone in it, with the energy
to stand up against violence and oppression and to seek justice. In fact,
after a few moments with him, you might wonder how you can spend your time
doing anything else.

Haitian radio pioneer and human-rights activist Jean Dominique was just
such a person, and The Agronomist, a documentary from director Jonathan
Demme, captures both his energized essence and the incredible breadth of
his influence in his native country. It is an inspiring, moving film, a
tribute to a man who brought critical news and information to the people of
Haiti even as a series of dictatorships sought violently to shut him down.
Jean Dominique was an exceptional, incredibly alive person -- his face
charts a remarkable display of expressions -- and it's a pleasure to spend
ninety minutes in his company.

Trained as an agronomist, Dominique began his career in the Haitian
countryside, attempting to better the lives of the agricultural majority by
improving their crops. His destiny, however, lay elsewhere: In 1968,
Dominique purchased the lease of Radio Haiti Inter, Haiti's oldest radio
station, where he sought to improve the lives of his countrymen in another
way -- by informing them and inspiring them to agitate for their rights.

At the time, radio was not a medium for news; it was a source of
entertainment. Dominique set about to change that. He had long since been
politicized, both by his anti-occupation father and by his studies abroad,
in France, where the world of cinema had opened his eyes to the
possibilities for enacting social change. So he used the station to
broadcast news -- in Haitian Creole, the language of the people, as opposed
to the French understood only by elites. For the first time, the people of
Haiti (80 percent of whom were illiterate) received regular information
about what was happening in their country, including reports of the
violence perpetrated by whatever dictatorship happened to be in power at
the time.

It was a revolutionary act. As Dominique puts it, "Every [piece of]
information ... was seen by the power as opposition." He sought nothing
more (or less) than the enactment of democracy and the observance of human
rights in Haiti; this stance was enough to render him a revolutionary and a
target of the military police under Papa and Baby Docs Duvalier. Time after
time, the police lined up in front of the station and fired bullets; if he
could, Dominique broadcast the event as it was happening.

At times, however, the violence drove him out of Haiti and into exile in
New York, where he continued to promote the cause of democracy in Haiti,
appearing on the Charlie Rose show and pleading for the CIA to withdraw its
support of the oppressive regime. (The United States has played an unsavory
role in Haiti; when Baby Doc Duvalier fled the country, a US military plane
served as his transport.) However, as soon as he felt it was safe enough,
Dominique returned to pick up where he had left off, rebuilding his
demolished station with donations from listeners. In 1986, when he arrived
in Port-au-Prince after six years abroad, he was greeted by sixty thousand
joyous countrymen.

"Joy" is a good word for Dominique: Despite a lifetime of confronting
oppressive forces that never seemed to change, he was indubitably alive
with joy. In the film, he recounts dramatic stories of resistance and
solidarity with sparkling eyes and a huge grin. After speaking about his
six-month imprisonment, he laughs merrily, as though acknowledging that a
little jail time could hardly be expected to stop him. Even approaching
seventy, his body is gleaming with health, his eyes wide open with the
benign ferocity of his mission. "You cannot kill truth," he says with utter
assurance.

Jean Dominique's pleasure in life was no doubt augmented by a loving and
supportive romantic partnership. He fell in love with Michèle Montas, a
highly educated, outspoken activist in her own right, not long after
purchasing the radio station. Together, they broadcast the news,
establishing the institution of Radio Haiti Inter as a dynamic couple. They
remained together through every exile and return. Dominique's family, too,
is nothing if not articulate: When framing a story from their childhood,
his older sister likens herself to the tragic Greek heroine Antigone.

Though it comes at a time of yet more turmoil in Haiti, and though its
subject intersects with several decades of Haitian history, The Agronomist
is neither a political tract nor a history of politics in Haiti. It is a
biography of a single man, whose light was so bright that it shone over an
entire country, even (and especially) in the face of the darkness that
wished to extinguish it. One hopes that Demme's film will bring the power
of Dominique's voice and life to as many people in this country as possible.

.