29594: Hermantin(News)Film festival goes on the road in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Fri, Dec. 01, 2006


HAITI
Film festival goes on the road in Haiti
The annual film festival in Jacmel, Haiti, will take the show on the road this 
year, visiting some of the country's most poverty-stricken neighborhoods.
By JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

A Port-au-Prince slum where armed gangs and ricocheting bullets are a way of 
life hardly seems a good place to go to the movies.

But for Haiti-born hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean and organizers of the Festival 
Film Jakmel -- which is in full swing this week -- the Cité Soleil slum is not 
only the ideal place for a movie theater, but also a whisper of hope for their 
most daring social experiment yet.

After the final credits roll Saturday at the film festival in the southern city 
of Jacmel, a customized four-wheel-drive truck packing a 15-foot tall screen 
and sound system will begin a tour of Haiti, parking in soccer fields and 
public squares to showcase a series of films.

First stops: Cité Soleil and some of the other most volatile neighborhoods of 
the Haitian capital.

''For the poorest of the poor in the ghettos of Port-au-Prince, this is 
extremely important,'' said American filmmaker David Belle, one of the founders 
of the film festival. ``We are bringing inspiring messages of hope and progress 
to them, and offering them a distraction from the hardships of daily 
survival.''

In its third year, the film festival began as a way to celebrate Haiti's 
bicentennial and transform Jacmel, an artsy coastal town three hours south of 
Port-au-Prince, into a tourist destination. The event, which began this year on 
Nov. 24, has since flourished and attracted an estimated 50,000 visitors last 
year.

But this year, Belle decided to team up with Jean's Yéle Haiti Foundation and 
the French Alliance Franc¸aise to take the show on the road. Six of the 92 
films being screened in Jacmel also will be shown in Port-au-Prince 
neighborhoods beginning Dec. 11.

`A FEW GET SAVED'

While no one expects the screenings to immediately change life in Haiti, where 
the slums have become ground zero in the armed conflict between gangs, Haitian 
police and U.N. peacekeepers, Jean believes they can plant seeds of change.

''In America, we provide opportunities and statistically this has worked,'' 
said Jean, who will wrap up the Jacmel festival with a free beachfront concert 
tonight -- his first performance in his homeland in nearly a decade.

''We go into slum areas, we go into projects, we put programs. Despite the 
violence, we still see a change within the community,'' he told The Miami 
Herald. ``And does everybody get saved? No. A few get saved. But the few that 
do get saved are able to go back into the community and keep helping.''

As he talks about his vision, Jean's voice rises with excitement. He's an 
admirer of reggae icon Bob Marley and likens what he is trying to do to what 
the Jamaican-born star did for the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica: use music to 
give voice to the plight of ghetto life.

''The goal that I hope for is the same goal that . . . got me here,'' Jean said 
in a telephone interview. 'People say, `You go into these places and as soon as 
you leave there is another shooting. What's the point?' The point is, if you 
turn around and forget these kids and keep walking forward, there would not be 
a Wyclef Jean today.''

LIFE IS `FRAGILE'

Tony Augustin, 23, who lives in Cité Soleil, welcomes the effort.

''Life here is so fragile. You go to sleep not knowing if you will wake to see 
another day,'' he said one day after yet another gun battle between U.N. 
peacekeepers and gangs. The coming movie show, he added, ``is a great thing. It 
will give us an idea of what other places are like. We will see what is being 
done . . . what to do, what not to do. We will see how others live.'

The concept of ''mobile cinemas'' has been widely used in the refugee camps of 
Africa, and in the 1970s they were tapped by the Cuban film institute to 
deliver culture to rural communities. Earlier this month, the Caracas city 
government in Venezuela launched a similar effort in seven low-income 
neighborhoods, showing films that speak to key issues in that city while 
entertaining the audiences.

The films being shown as part of Haiti's mobile cinema also speak to the 
country's issues: AIDS, crime, domestic violence and child slavery. Among them 
is the story of a Haitian musician with AIDS -- The President Has AIDS? -- 
which was produced by a Haitian filmmaker and stars a Haitian cast including 
Hollywood actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, currently starring in NBC's Heroes.

''It is controversial,'' Jean-Louis, who attended part of the festival, said of 
the film, which premiered on opening night in Jacmel. ``Sometimes you need 
controversial topics for people to speak and to be aware of what is going on.''

Another is the Cameroon documentary Sisters in Law, a story of two women who 
take on the legal system and empower women to defend themselves against spousal 
abuse. It is among 16 films that have been dubbed into Creole by Jacmel youths 
for Haitian audiences.

''If you close your eyes, you would think these were Haitian women,'' said 
prize-winning Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, . ``These are real 
people and there are all of these similarities with Haiti.''

Danticat, who also is at the Jacmel film festival, and Jean-Louis say they are 
curious about the kinds of discussions that will follow in the poor 
neighborhoods once the truck drives off to its next stop.

''Sometimes it's that one moment that just flips things,'' Danticat said. ``It 
can be pretty incredible and could flip the way you look at the world.''

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