=?x-unknown?q?29321=3A__=28news=29__Chamberlain=3A__Cit=E9_?==?x-unknown?q?Soleil_film_at__Warsaw_festival_=28fwd=29?=

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(Dominican Today, 9 Oct 06)

Haiti?s most violent ghetto goes to Warsaw's silver screens



WARSAW.- Representatives from 48 countries will breathe this capital?s
Autumnal air during a celebration of the global art of movies, as Warsaw?s
22nd International Film Festival kicked off last Friday.

The event features this year main competitions are New Films, New
Directors, and in International, Regional and Feature-Length Documentary,
with157 films selected from hundreds of entries and from the programs of
the leading film festivals, screened in cinemas across Poland?s capital.

Many of the productions? world premiere took place just weeks or even days
ago, at a just concluded festival in Toronto, and earlier ones in Venice
and Lugarno.

One of these, Ghosts of Cité Soleil, is competing in the Documentary
category is a first feature-length production of the Danish filmmaker Asger
Leth. His father Jorgen Leth -a director as well- made films in Haiti since
the early 1980s and has lived there since 1991, from 1999 to 2005 as a
Danish consul in Jacmel.

The movie focuses on the actual events surrounding the last months of Jean
Bertrand Aristide's presidency

The story is about two brothers from Port-au-Prince, living on the edge of
life in Cité Soleil, considered one of the world?s poorest, roughest, and
most dangerous slums. They are the leaders of the local slum gang whose
fellows are known as chimères, or ghosts.

One of them wants to fight for the president, dreaming of one day joining
Aristide?s Lavalas party, whereas he other wants to live free, out of the
political machinery and brutal reality driven by the notorious violence.
Instead of being a part of strong-arm militias, helping to quell the
resistance to Aristide, he opts to find his way in music, writing rap
lyrics. A French relief worker is the love interest, with whom they both
fall for.

Director Asger Leth and his crew had an exceptional chance to reach the
heart of that Haitian ghetto and get to know gang culture in the months
leading up to Aristide?s forced ouster in February 2004.

Last Tuesday the situation took unexpected turn as heavily armed policemen
entered the slum, shaking hands and chatting with inhabitants in a gesture
of friendship expected to reduce a hatred of locals against the
authorities. Cité Soleil, is currently a stronghold of supporters of
president Rene Preval's predecessor which in recent years had become a
lawless, no-man?s land for anyone but the gang members, who the government
has yet to persuade to lay down their arms.

World famous Haitian-born rapper and reggae singer Wyclef Jean also stars
as himself in the movie.