Is there a correlation between geography and creativity? For New York-born Natalie Holly, the answer is a firm “yes”. The writer-producer-filmmaker witnesses her creative juices boiling beyond temperature, after she made the move from the USA to Cap Haitien.
Kreyolicious: So you moved to Haiti recently? Had you been to Haiti prior to the move?
Yes. I’d been to Haiti a few times prior to moving there. However, my longest stretch in the country was three months.
Kreyolicious: Did you feel isolated at first?
I am very blessed to have a lot of family living in Haiti, including my sister who had been living here a year already, before I moved. So I have to say I never felt completely isolated. When the going got tough, I generally had someone I could run and vent to.
Often, those of us in the diaspora tend to romanticize our Ayiti Cherie. The reality is, no matter how well you have mastered your French or Kreyol, you are still noticeably a foreigner, which can at worst, make you a target for people who may not have the best intentions, and at the very least make for some uncomfortable exchanges and experiences.
Kreyolicious: So, how’s the assimilation process for you?
Identity—how one self-identifies and how one is perceived – is an interesting concept. As a Haitian-American, and frankly for anyone of Haitian descent who decides to move here, you may be expected to adjust faster and to understand what is naturally foreign to you. You may be given less of a grace period than the foreigner who has no Haitian lineage. In that way, I found that I didn’t always feel as free here as I have felt in other countries…Free to ask questions, to be naive, and to explore. Often friends and family project their own fears—some of which are valid—onto us. The liberation I had elsewhere, in some ways, did not always exist for me in Haiti. However, keeping this in mind, I was still determined to carve out a life for myself. The good, bad, and ugly experiences all taught me very valuable lessons. I had to accept that while Haiti is a part of me, I will never be fully Haitian and there will be many aspects of our beautiful country and people that I will never fully understand.
So assimilation in this context, I find, is not a realistic goal. I think “adjustment” would be a better term here. I’ve adjusted over time, and as a result, am far better equipped to switch gears and handle various situations as they come.
Kreyolicious: From what I gather, moving to Haiti has really gotten your creative juices stewing. What are some of the things you’ve been up to?
In my last semester of graduate school at the Actors Studio Drama School in NY where I was studying acting, I started writing a screenplay that takes place in post-earthquake Haiti. Immediately following the earthquake I was drawn to the accounts of children who had survived being trapped under rubble. Through that curiosity, I developed a character—a little girl who survives being trapped under a supermarket with the help of an imaginary friend. Still, I didn’t feel I could write a believable story without having truly experienced the regular ins and outs of daily life in that environment. Five years later, that screenplay became KAFOU—a translation of the word “crossroad”—a six-part dramatic television series. What started as a single story about a little girl under rubble, evolved into several intersecting stories that take you into the lives of an ensemble cast of unlikely and resilient characters: A young woman rebuilding her father’s company after a promising career abroad…A motorcycle taxi driver lured into a kidnapping scheme while caring for his newly disabled brother…An American missionary and her involvement in child trafficking at a local orphanage—and a foreign government official managing aid and faulty policies in the country. Each of them is forced to make some very tough decisions under difficult circumstances, as their lives intersect at a moral crossroad. Hence the name, KAFOU.
I am very blessed to have Haitian-Canadian producer, Laurence Magloire of FastForward Haiti who produced the documentary Des Hommes et des Dieux (Of Men and of Gods), attached to the project. We were recently invited to attend the Caribbean Tales Incubator (CTI) at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, which is an-end-to-end process that supports projects from concept through production and marketing to sales of content. Though we did not win the Big Pitch, an event organized by CTI, we were selected as an audience favorite and were able to pitch KAFOU to potential investors and executive producers there and later in Montreal. To learn more about KAFOU, you can check out our website, and our Facebook page.
Above: A still from KAFOU, the series.
Kreyolicious: That’s so cool. What else have you up your sleeves?
I was also recently awarded a grant from the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church to begin research for a documentary on my great-great-grandfather, Bishop James Theodore Holly, the first African-American bishop of the Episcopal Church. Long before Marcus Garvey’s ‘Back to Africa” movement, Bishop Holly, an abolitionist and peer of other historical figures like Frederick Douglass, led a group of African Americans and Canadians who emigrated to Haiti in the late 1800s, making Haiti the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church with over 83,700 members and over 100 congregations to date. Bishop Holly also wrote the book Defender of the Race, and co-authored Black Separatism and The Caribbean in 1860. Links and alliances within the black diaspora like those between Haiti and African Americans continue to fascinate me.
So, my decision to move to Haiti has proved to be one that continues to feed my creativity and intellect. For that, I remain grateful.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE KAFOU SERIES WEBSITE | CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE KAFOU SERIES WEBPAGE
