Deportation has affected many immigrant groups, in particular Haitian families. When a deportation order is executed, the immediate consequence is the breaking up of a family. But the bigger question often is, what becomes of the deportees? What becomes of the abruptly deported? What are their lives like?
Documentary filmmakers Chantal Regnault and Rachèle Magloire teamed up to seek and deliver answers to those questions through their insightful documentary work Deported. Their collaboration blends two different backgrounds—Magloire was born in Haiti, moved to Canada at the age of four to return two decades later, and Regnault was born in France to French parents, and is a former resident of Haiti.
Deported offers many perspectives in understanding the lives of those who have been deported.
Tell us about yourselves.
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: I studied Communications at the University of Quebec in Montreal. In Montreal, I volunteered in community radio, particularly Radio City Centre, on the show “The Voice of Haiti.” I went back to Haiti in February of 1987, and worked as a journalist on Télé Haiti, then briefly at Télévision National D’Haiti before starting Productions Lantern, an audiovisual production company, with Carl Lafontant. I’ve been doing audiovisual productions ever since. And I have made several documentaries, including Kalfou Plezi, Pye Devan and Children of the Coup d’Etat. Since 2004, I have been working with my sister Laurence Magloire and the foundation MWEM in the distribution of films in Haiti through the traveling movie program Sinema Anba Zetwal [Cinema Under the Stars]. In 2006, I joined Chantal Regnault to make Deported.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: I have a degree in Modern Literature from the Sorbonne-Paris-France, and I continued in the same specialty at New York University, when I moved to New York in 1971. In the late 1970s, I left school to devote myself to photography, inspired by the New York street scene and the incredible diversity of human beings from around the globe. From the outset, I was interested in the documentary aspect of photography.
For the next 30 years, I will translate that interest to personal photographic essays, produced independently and through my work with the press, magazines, and institutions. The 1970s was the emergence of hip-hop Culture in New York City. Brooklyn, Bronx: Rap, Graffeurs, Breakdancers will end up being one of my first photo projects. It is also in the late 70s that I made my first trip to Haiti, and its remaining visual wealth will become one of my main sources of inspiration. After multiple trips to Haiti between 1979 and 1983, I will not return for a decade. Back in New York, I’ll rub shoulders with and photograph several Haitian families and Voodoists, who were arriving in the 1970s by any means at hand to New York, Brooklyn, the Bronx, New Jersey. I returned to Haiti in 1993—this time to make it my primary residence until the earthquake of January 12, 2010 chases me out.
Rachèle Magloire (left) and Chantal Regnault (right) pose for a photo.
How did you get interested in filmmaking?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: I already had an interest in film by choosing to study Communication. I had a concentration in radio, but we studied the basics of all the fields: photography, film, television. The interest in film came from my experience in television in Haiti. When I was little, I also loved looking at the pictures of my father, especially on Sunday nights when we watched family slides on the big screen.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: Going from documentary photography to documentary film, isn’t that much of a stretch. The values remains the same. And I’ve always loved the language of images, including movies. I remember as a student in Paris, we spent more time in the art house theaters in the Latin Quarter than in the classroom. In 1993 I was a news photographer for a while with Gamma-Liaison Agency and collaborated with foreign print and broadcast media journalists. I also met Rachèle, who already had several reports and documentaries to her credit at that point. We related to one another, and in 2006 the idea to co-direct a documentary on the U.S. Deportees in Haiti started to take shape.
What was your first encounter with a deported person like?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: Since the mid-nineties, I—like many other Haitians—were convinced that the phenomenon of crime was either introduced or reinforced by the arrival of prisoners in the country. Indeed, it is at this time that we began to talk about them. According to the information we had obtained in our research, it’s following the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier that the U.S. and Canada began to send people here [in Haiti] who had committed crimes in their home countries. Then I started to meet some of them, mostly young people in the streets of Port-au- Prince, and they gave me the feeling of what it’s like to feel lost in this country.
Then after 1996, deportations became more systematic. In the 2000s, I accompanied an American journalist who was doing a paper on the deportations, and we witnessed the arrival of a group of persons aboard an aircraft of the U.S. Marshall. It was quite shocking to see these guys landing, handcuffed and escorted by heavily-armed police. I started to get interested in what crimes they had committed to be deported. Having had to reestablish myself in this country that I really didn’t know, I wondered how things were going for them since they were in the same predicament, but not by deliberate choice, as they had been sent there by circumstances. I think the big difference was that although I had not grown up in Haiti, I had a lot of interest in the country, its history, its struggles throughout my youth in Montreal.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: The first deportee I met in Haiti was Richard, the main character in the documentary. It was in 1993 at the Holiday Inn Hotel—which will later on become Le Plaza–on Champ de Mars in Port-au-Prince. The events unfolding in Haiti—which lead to the U.S. military intervention in September 1994—brought in the international media, many of whom were staying at Le Plaza. Richard was on the scene; he could be seen at Champs de Mars. He offered his services as a guide and interpreter for English and French journalists and photographers as he spoke English, French and Creole. This thus provided the cash he needed for his addiction to crack. He told his story of being deported from the U.S. and his situation was an isolated case at the time, as he had been sent back in 1988 on a commercial flight [to Haiti] and walked out of the airport freely without any administrative procedure.
In 1998, during a visit to the National Penitentiary, I became aware of the magnitude of this phenomenon. I was literally shocked to happen on a cell crammed with young men who had come straight out of Brooklyn, NY and neighborhoods that were familiar to me. They were deported from the U.S. and illegally imprisoned and that experience was to last until 2006. I must also mention Jean-Pierre—also known as G Money—who I met in 2004. He was the “fixer” for a colleague from the Miami Herald, Joe Mozingo. I was to see him again on multiple occasions in the following years. He does not appear in the film but we were at the very beginning of our work, and he introduced me to a circle of deportees who gravitated around him.
Watch out for the next part of this article, in which the documentarians discuss Deported further. In the meantime, please be sure to view the trailer of the doc below.
[Photos: Photo of filmmakers: @safimag; streets of Brooklyn photo: © Chantal Regnault
