Storming Papa Doc
Documentary
directed by Mario L. Delatour
On July 28 1958, ex-army officers to Haiti from Florida landed in Delugé. They take possession of Dessalines Barracks behind the Palais National, in order to remove President François Duvalier. The night of July 28 to 29will be a long confrontation between Duvalier and his attacker. Former Captain Alix Pasquet, Lt. Henry Perpign, Dominique Philippe along with 5 American mercenaries.
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#duvalier #haiti #tuskegee #haitian #army #mercenaries #president #florida #documentary #film #dessalines #papadoc #history #istwa

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme has passed away, it was announced today. He was 73. Demme is known for many films, among them The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won the Best Director Oscar. The award-winning director and screenwriter was a fervent Haitian art collector, and one of the paintings in his collection was once used as the cover of the first edition of Breath, Eyes, Memory! Danticat and Demme were good friends, joined by their love for Haiti.

In the mid-2000s, Demme directed and produced The Agronomist, a documentary about the life of Jean-Leopold Dominique, a radio journalist slain in the early 2000s in Port-au-Prince.

Demme’s interest in Haiti was not just based on film and art. According to an article written by Larry Birnbaum in the archives of Spin magazine, Demme co-produced a collection of Haitian music that was released in 1990 called Burning Rhythms in collaboration with two other producers Fred Paul and Edward Saxon, helping bring Haitian music to wider audiences. He also used Haitian music in the soundtrack for the film Silence of the Lambs. And speaking of soundtracks, he recruited producer Jerry Wonda and Wyclef for the soundtrack that accompanied the release of The Agronomist.

Kreyolicious sends out ondolences to Mr. Demme’s family and loved ones.

Main Photo: Jonathan Demme with Michele Montas, featured in The Agronomist, during a showing of the film in 2003. Photo Credit: Getty

CLICK HERE to learn more about The Agronomist

Ever seen that movie Nora’s Salon II? Actress Claudine Oriol has a role in that film. She’s also appeared in such films as Pluie d’Espoir, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, As Good as Dead, and Blonde Ambition . Now, instead of playing scenes for directors, she’s sitting in the director’s chair, helming Resilient Hearts, a documentary about the 2010 Haiti earthquake. One of the few documented accounts told from a female point-of-view, the doc was an official selection at the 2014 DC Caribbean Festival. It was also screened at the United Nations.

Kreyolicious: Would you mind telling the readers about yourself.

I’m Haitian-American. I grew-up in New York. At first, we lived in Brooklyn, on Ocean Parkway, which was at the time a Hasidic Jewish, Italian, Irish, Russian neighborhood. That mosaic of various ethnicities played a large part in my early life. Afterwards, my parents moved to Long Island. While attending college, I moved to the City—Manhattan. I am an actor and I guess you can now add filmmaker as well.

Kreyolicious: Sometimes a creative mind will ponder on something for months, and years, before it’s brought to fruition. How long did it take you to conceptualize this documentary?

I have always wanted to share the Haiti I know with others. I left Port-au-Prince one hour before the earthquake. During the aftermath of the earthquake I realized that the rest of the world knew very little about Haiti and it’s people. I felt that the Haitian voices were silent and that we were being defined by outsiders who knew little about our history and culture. Three short weeks after the earthquak,e I returned to Haiti to make the documentary. While making the documentary I witnessed the unity that existed among Haitians at that time and realized that this film can also serve as reminder to us all about the accomplishments we can realize when we come together. I also wanted to make a film about Haiti from a Haitian perspective and give a voice to the voiceless. Thus the conceptualization didn’t take long, the realization however took longer I’ve been working on this project for the past five years.

Kreyolicious: Was this the first project you’ve written and directed?

This is the first project that I’ve written and directed.

Above: Claudine Oriol surveys the damage done by the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince.

Kreyolicious: Now that the experience is over, what would you have done differently?

It’s difficult to answer that question because I was a novice and didn’t know much about directing and producing a film. Thus for me it has bee a learning process from which I gained a lot of experience. An unconventional schooling if you will which will definitely enrich my next project. I guess I wouldn’t change anything! But I’ve definitely learned how to make the process easier.

Kreyolicious: If you were mentoring a first-time female director, what would you tell her?

Directing a documentary and a film are two different things. With a documentary, you have to be patient and let the story unfold and guide you. You also have to be pliable; you can’t be rigid about the outcome while maintaining a clear a precise idea about the story you wish to tell. Directing a movie can be more forgiving because you get to play and color within the lines. The story is already there. You have to gain the trust of the actors so that they become fearless with their performances. In both cases, the director should get the best cast, crew and post-production professionals the budget allows.

Above: Claudine Oriol (center) poses with some supporters after a screening of Resilient Hearts.

Kreyolicious: What’s the cinema scene looking like right now in Haiti?

Progress has been made. I still believe there is a lot of work to be done. It’s an industry with great potential and opportunities for those who are willing to do it properly.

Kreyolicious: What’s next for you?

Now that the documentary is complete, I have to ensure that it is seen. We are scheduling premieres in Montreal, New York, Miami and Chicago. These premieres will be fundraisers to support free screenings of the documentary throughout Haiti. The documentary will be available for streaming online on July first. A special edition DVD will be available on January 12, 2016. I love storytelling, so I’m also working on directing my first fiction feature. Social responsibility and education are important to me. I would like to merge them both together to create awareness amongst Haitians about our duties and obligations towards this beautiful land called Ayiti.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE RESILIENT HEARTS WEBSITE| RESILIENT HEARTS ON FACEBOOK

The film business has been a big part of Mario Delatour’s life for a good while now. Born in South America to Haitian parents, Delatour’s career has taken him to Haiti, New York, Los Angeles, Miami and the Middle East. Delatour is touted by many observers as a natural-born storyteller, who uses film to tell his stories.

His career launched off in the late 1970s, when he decided to embark in the world of cinema. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Delatour breathed film as much as he breathed oxygen. In 2002, he decided to explore post-Apartheid South Africa with his project The limits of Patience. In recent years, his subject has been almost exclusively Haiti, a little island, as we all know, that is the inspiration for so many fascinating stories worth telling.

Delatour’s career is in full swing. There’s never a moment of dullness in his life, or a dearth of subjects. One of his most acclaimed documentaries has been Un Certain Bord de Mer, a work that chronicled Arab and Middleastern presence in Haiti. Delatour has also made Quarante Ans Après [Forty Years After], a documentary about the Jacmel-born poet, diplomat, and journalist Roussan Camille. Camille died in 1961, the same year he won the Prix Dumarsais Estimé for his poetry collection Multiple Présence. While he was known as one of the most prolific poets of his generation, Camille’s name in later years, was very little known outside of intellectual circles. Delatour aimed to change this with his documentary. Quarante Ans Après was screened at the world’s most prestigious film festivals Brussels, Belgium, Montreal, Jacmel and Amiens, France.

A graduate of the Columbia School of Motion Pictures and Television in Los Angeles, Delatour has made his alma mater proud at every turn. In 2004, he founded his own film production company, Amistad Films. Not surprisingly, the documentarian expediently put together a doc about the 2010 Haiti earthquake with 35 Long seconds: Haiti’s Deadly Earthquake (it’s French title is 35 Secondes Fatales). This year, he was part of the Cine del Caribe Traveling Filmmaker showcase in Havana, Cuba.

Delatour’s most recent project is Dead or victorious but not Prisoner, which traces the life of Alix Pasquet (and one-time Tuskegee Airman) and his participation—along with two Haitian exiles and U.S. nationals—in an invasion and overthrow of then-Haitian president Francois Duvalier in the late 1950s.

Q & A

So you were born in Venezuela of Haitian parents, were your parents exiles there?
My parents moved to Venezuela in 1950 where my father worked as a civil engineer. In the early fifties Venezuela was booming with petroleum dollars and so opportunities were plentiful for professionals from all over the world. This is about the time when Venezuela was experiencing a massive arrival of immigrants notably Italians fleeing the harsh conditions of post World War II Europe. I was born in Caracas in September of 1955. Four months later—in January of 1956—my parents brought me to Haiti. Haiti has been with me ever since!

What led you to launch your film company Amistad Films in the mid-2000’s?
In January of 2001, I came back to Haiti after a 10 year absence. This was a difficult period for me, as tragedy had struck my family with the passing of my oldest brother Leslie Delatour who died of cancer. I decided to stay in Haiti to be closer to my grieving parents and family. I didn’t regret the decision as the ten years that I had been away from Haiti had been a roller coaster ride which took me to, roughly 15 different countries on assignment. In those days, I worked in various capacities as a cameraman, a researcher, a production manager and later on as a producer. I had spent the last three years of those ten years producing in Japan for European networks, principally RTL—Radio Television Luxembourg. My professional life up until that time had been to feed television networks with various story ideas and to assist others in making their films. I had felt that the time had come for me to apply all of this work experience to making my own films. So in 2002, I founded the film company Amistad Films as a joint venture between myself and a dear friend of mine, Dominican film producer Jaime Pina. The idea was to service the production needs of foreign film companies looking to work in either Haiti or in the Dominican republic. Needless to say, we also looked forward to producing our own indigenous films.

The word Amistad means friendship in Spanish. Filmmaking I felt, was a way to bridge the differences between the two countries on the island. If we could make films to showcase our respective cultures we could help break the vicious cycle of stereotypes which have kept the two people apart and suspicious of one another.

In the process, we successfully serviced a number of visiting production companies on both sides of the island. One production that I am particularly proud to have assisted is Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates’ series on Blacks in Latin America. The series filmed both in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and looked at the keen difference between how the two nations dealt with their African heritage. The piece was broadcasted on PBS in 2011 and was the subject of much discussion.

As for making our own films, in 2002, I produced my first 52-minute film on the very talented Haitian poet Roussan Camille, a man who had done much to promote and secure a place for Haiti among its neighbors. The biography film premiered at Vues d’Afrique in Montreal in 2003 to much raving success.

Your film company Amistad Films has HASCO La Grand Dame listed as your oldest documentary, dating back to the year 1988. Was that your first documentary?
The acronym HASCO stands for Haitian American Sugar Cane Company. For many years, HASCO was Haiti’s premier sugar cane plant. The plant was started around 1912 and was finished during the American occupation in 1917. HASCO once upon a time powered up the city of Port au Prince with electricity from its powerful generators in the days when the capital was a sleepy Caribbean city of 250,000 people. HASCO however was better known for its network of trains, which went all the way out to the southern city of Léogane. On their way back from the cane fields, the trains would cut through downtown Port-au-Prince and shake every building in the Bord de Mer commercial district. In those days, it was a common sight to see kids run along the side of the trains to catch some free sticks of cane. Unfortunately, a good many lost limbs with this practice—hence the expression, “Banm jamb pran kan”—give a leg and I’ll give you some cane—that came to be associated with HASCO trains.

The Mevs family purchased the plant in the early eighties and kept it running until the early nineties when contraband sugar started flooding the market. It was a sad day when it closed its doors, as HASCO was only second to the state in providing Haitian workers with jobs. Planters, seasonal workers and staff all went out of work because of a massive influx of cheap sugar on the Haitian market. This signed the death warrant of HASCO. It made no sense to keep such a costly operation running! In 1988, Mrs. Huguette Mevs called on to me to produce a film on sugar. I seized on the opportunity to tell the story of HASCO. It was only my second documentary film. In 1983, I had made a 30-minute film on road building in Haiti.

You made a documentary Un Certain Bord de Mer about the Arabic heritage of some Haitians. How did the idea for this project come about?
I am a nomadic soul by nature, my parents instilled the travel bug in me early on with long trips to far away lands like the Congo—a country where my family dropped anchor for a year in 1966. All of this to tell you, that I have always been fascinated by the reasons that cause people to move around the world. The Arab community is a thriving one in Haiti. I had often pondered on how they came to choose Haiti as their final destination, and so while researching this subject for the film, I discovered that a good many initially set out for Brazil and came to Haiti purely by accident! The research for this film in 2005 took me to the Middle East on two occasions. I went to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan for the project as the bulk of the community in Haiti came from Lebanon and Syria.

It must be noted as well that a good many Arab families also came from Palestine. The vast majority of the Arabs came to Haiti towards the end of the nineteen-century. Most of them were Christians fleeing the persecution of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over their homeland. The history of the Arabs in Haiti is the same story repeated all over this hemisphere. Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro—he lived from 1825 to 1891—towards the end of his rule went to the region to encourage immigration to his country and so loads crossed the Atlantic in search of a more secure life. It is around that time that many came to Haiti during the reign of president Florvil Hypollite in 1891. I must tell you that initially they were not welcomed with open arms and measures were taken to expel them on two occasions. This took place under the rule of president Leconte. The Americans gave the community a brief respite during their 19 year occupation simply because they imported goods from America as opposed to the Haitian elite which imported goods mostly from Europe. T

The community hit another snag in 1930 with the laws of President Vincent, which seriously hindered their commercial activities. The laws proved to be unpopular and were rescinded. Further down the line in the sixties, President Duvalier favored the community over the mulatto class and gave them preferential treatment. Today the community is well integrated and is an economic force to reckon with. In a nutshell that is the story of our Haitian-Arab brothers in Haiti! The documentary Un Certain Bord de Mer examines all this period and describes in details the up and downs of the community in Haiti. Bord de Mer by the way is Port-au-Prince’s commercial district by the sea front.

Roussan Camille, a poet of the 1940s era in Haiti was the subject of one of your documentaries. How did you get introduced to him?
In the early sixties, Roussan Camille’s family lived next door to us in Bourdon. I never knew the poet as a child though I was a good friend of his son Jean Camille. Roussan Camille died in 1961 at the age of 49, a premature death by all accounts. I was introduced to the world of the poet through the numerous photographs he left behind. A very tall stylish man whose talent was used by numerous Haitian presidents notably Dumarsais Estimé, Paul Eugène Magloire and François Duvalier. It was Roussan Camille who was instrumental in having Cuban sculptors do the fantastic statues of our national heroes on the Champs de Mars during Magloire’s reign. It was also Roussan Camille who represented Haiti in San Francisco for the birth of the United Nations in 1947. Camille’s book of poems Assault a la nuit is a classic piece of literary work, a cornerstone of Haitian literature.

I was encouraged to make this film by my good friend Régine Estimé daughter of president Dumarsais Estimé. She felt that Haiti was lacking in its collective memory and that today’s youth needed to discover the work of these giants who had done so much to enhance our prestige in the forties, fifties and sixties. It was also Régine Estimé who encouraged me to work with the great Syto Cave. Syto wrote a beautiful poetic text to which I cut a mixture of archival footage, photos and interviews; the result was a very poetic film. The film after it premiered at Vues d’Afrique in Montreal in 2003 created a buzz around the man. As a result, the poet’s daughter received a posthumously literary prize from Deschamps in Haiti. The film was financed by two grants from FOKAL and the French embassy.

You currently live in Miami? Do you go back and forth to Haiti?
I currently live in Haiti as of June of 2012. I’ve recently come back once again to Haiti after a brief stay in Luxembourg for a year and a half. I will be here for a little while, time enough to finish my next film that has been in the making for the last 5 years. Whether or not I leave or stay this time, one thing is certain, I never stay away too long from Haiti. I consider it my home. Having said so, I must say that these are difficult times indeed for Haiti after this dreadful earthquake in 2010 that destroyed so much. An encouraging sign though is the resilience of the Haitian people who’ve managed to move on despite so much hardship.

What procedure did you follow, in terms of coming up with research, and interview subjects?
The research work for every film is different; it depends on the subject matter that you are treating. In the year 2000 in Japan for example, I did research for a piece on foreign girls working as bar hostesses in Tokyo. The work was interesting as I spent much time in bars and talked to Russian, Ukranian and German girls who worked on a part time basis in the field. My initial idea, that this sort of work was somewhat borderline prostitution turned out to be something quite different. These girls simply entertained their customers by pouring their drinks, listening to their jokes and they made these overworked salary men feel like kings and in the process they made money. The point is you need to jump in without any preconceived notions. You need to be curious and open minded and go with the flow of the work!

In 2006, the U.S, embassy in Haiti had asked me to do a piece on violence and the need for dialogue. Well, I spent much time in the field, particularly in Cité Soleil where kidnappings were rampant in those days. I spoke to gang leaders, foot soldiers and child soldiers. I went to juvenile detention centers; I also spoke to kidnapping victims to get a sense of what propelled this senseless violence. As a rule, there is always more underneath! Often this work is potentially dangerous and hairs-rising, but these are the risks of the trade.

In 1996 we researched a story on a case of infanticide in Rwanda, a nation that had gone through the trauma of genocide where nearly a million people perished over the course of 120 days. We wondered how a woman that had witness so much killing in her village could find the strength to throw her own baby down a latrine. This story required that we spend time with this woman in the prison where she was incarcerated that we listened to her side of the story and not judged her. In a nutshell, once your research is done you’ll know who to interview and how to approach them!

You’re a documentary filmmaker, and your subjects are almost exclusively Haiti-related. Now, with the many fires, and now the earthquake that happened in 2010, do you think it’ll be somewhat difficult more than ever to find archival sources and documents to supplement your documentaries?
This is a very pertinent question as archives are quite difficult to access in Haiti. Where are the archives in Haiti? Well for the most part they are in the hands of private individuals, families, and some few existing foundations and there lies the problem, as these individuals or families or foundations are not always keen on sharing these documents. And why is that? Because of a lack of trust, the keepers of these documents are not always sure of your intentions hence there tends to be great suspicion in producing documents to others. Another thing is the complete lack of real established institutions like museums that could guarantee the safety of these documents and assure some sort of protection for future generations.

Having said so, in the midst of a devastated downtown Port-au-Prince, one can still go the library of the Frères de l’Instruction Chrétienne of Saint Louis de Gonzague and find relevant documents. It is quite amazing! Right across from that institution is the Bibliothèque Nationale where I was able to find periodicals for the Roussan Camille film. As a documentary filmmaker one is often in a seduction mode with various individuals to access their private archives. You need to establish trust or prove that your reputation is worthy of trust. For instance I was not successful in obtaining much family pictures from Arab families in Haiti for the film Un Certain Bord de Mer, believe it or not, a good many of the pictures used in that film, I was able to obtain them from an archive center in Beyrouth Lebanon known as Mémoire Collective.

The trend is beginning to change though with progressive institutions like FOKAL where you can go and access documents. Everyone is welcomed and thank God for that! Now the earthquake has done a lot harm because much was lost. I myself have lost 30% of my visual archives as there were stored in the family house which was leveled during the earthquake.

You studied film at Columbia School of Motion Pictures and Television in Los Angeles, and later you minored in Third World Cinema at UCLA. What are some of the biggest lessons you learned in film school?
Going to film school in the middle of Hollywood was the thrill of my life. I was just a young boy of twenty when I drove out west and what a rare privilege to have gone to film school in the world’s biggest film environment. In film school you watch films, you study them, you analyze them, you meet the people who make those films, your teachers work in the industry etc…It is an enlightening moment to be part of that. Los Angeles is also home to AFI, the American Film Institute, a higher institution of learning. If you are lucky you can get invited to attend seminars where you see and hear the pros of the film industry. At UCLA I was in the Latin American Studies department and I was privy to attend classes at the film school where I was exposed to third world films. I had never seen films before from Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Argentina and countries in Africa like Sénégal. I had an Ethiopian professor named Theshome Gabriel who was instrumental in educating me and helping me discover emerging filmmakers from the third world. Closer to our reality in Haiti I must say, I was very impressed by the Cuban films I saw at UCLA. It was an awakening moment for me as those countries with meager resources were able to produce quality films. Whereas they teach you in the industry of Hollywood that you cannot make a film for less than a million dollars, Cubans were making films with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and sometimes less.

Do you think it’s a must for every aspiring filmmaker to attend film school?
I highly recommend it though it is not always a ticket to success!

Documentary filmmaking is such a big part of your life. Will you eventually adventure to feature filmmaking?
My first film The New Tenant was a short shot on 16 mm with a cast of professional actors, so I came from a background of feature films. My friend Syto Cave recently encouraged me to write for fiction and I think I will do just that but I must tell you that filmmaking is a very challenging process. It sucks the wind of you!

Which work are you most proud of?
I am in the process of wrapping up the editing on a project I started five years ago. It deals with the Alix Pasquet invasion of Haiti in July of 1958 to topple president Francois Duvalier. The film is a historical one. Though it is not yet complete, I must say that the usage of animation for the reenactment scenes coupled with historical footage and photos and talking heads is new departure for me. It’s looking pretty good so far and hopefully soon the public will be able to see it.

Haitian women are the lifeblood of Haitian society and Claudine Michel, Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse and co-directors Mark Schuller and Renée Bergan wanted the whole world to know this through the project Poto Mitan. The award-winning and widely screened documentary, narrated by the award-winning author Edwidge Danticat, recounts the lives of five women in Haiti and through these five women, one learns how vital women are to every sector of society in Haiti.

Haitian women are the street entrepreneurs who are up before dawn to sell their goods at sidewalk-side supermarkets. They’re stitching and assembling in factories in the smaller cities in Haiti for billion dollar companies overseas, hence the Pillars of the Global economy subtitle. Poto Mitan is a tribute to these women.

Poto Mitan has been screened at countless documentary festivals, including in Ethiopia, Trinidad and Tobago, Austria, and major U.S. cities like Seattle and New Orleans. It has earned, among other honors, an Indie Spec Best Documentary Award from the Boston International Film Festival. At the 2009 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, it was a nominee for the Social Justice Award. The documentary is now available on DVD.

Born in Haiti, Dr. Ulysse is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She is also the Director for that the college’s Center for African-American Studies. She is a sought after commentator. She is also the author of Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica.

Schuller co-wrote Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake (with Pablo Morales), and along with Dr. Paul Farmer co-wrote the book Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs.

Michel heads the Black Studies Department at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and was born in Haiti. A cultural anthropologist, she is the editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies and the president of the Haitian Studies Association. Michel is also the co-author of several books including Black Studies: Current Issues, Enduring Questions. She was not available to answer questions, but is a great supporter of the project.

Q & A

Tell us about yourself.
SCHULLER: I’m an activist anthropologist who works on social justice issues in Haiti and elsewhere. Before becoming a grad student, I was a community organizer, in the Twin Cities. I spent the most time with the St. Paul Tenants Union, organizing people to defend their housing against forced eviction, etc. I began working in and on Haiti when I was a graduate student, beginning in 2000. Now that I’m a professor my role in Haiti is changing a bit – I am training students at the State University of Haiti where I’ve taught since 2004 to do their own fieldwork. Being a blan – a foreigner – in Haiti poses particular challenges, particularly after the earthquake and an ongoing UN occupation.

Above: Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse, anthropologist, author, commentator and Poto Mitan co-associate producer.

Do you feel that writing and doing research for your book Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, ULYSSE: A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica prepared you for the work on Poto Mitan?
Working class women all over the world are more or less treated the same way. That’s just a fundamental aspect of gender inequity and in the global capitalist system. And that is exactly what my book Downtown Ladies is about
how women in Jamaica are navigating structures that are impeding the

Did your involvement with Haiti begin by reading an article or a book about the country?
SCHULLER: My involvement in Haiti began in 1994, when I was the co-coordinator for our campus chapter of Amnesty International. This was one of the most violent chapters in Haiti’s recent history following a bloody coup d’etat against Haiti’s first democratically elected government. I was taking a class in “world history” and my professor who works on Latin America just didn’t mention the Haitian Revolution. And growing up in Chicago, I was told it was founded by a “black French.” So Haiti and its contribution to the US and freedom around the world was systematically erased. I had to be actively involved as a solidarity activist to learn these things. Paul Farmer’s Uses of Haiti had just been published.

How did Edwidge Danticat get involved with the project?
SCHULLER: Both of our Associate Producers, Gina Ulysse and Claudine Michel, had put out feelers. And she was invited to a fundraiser in Miami in 2007, where she read from her recently published Brother, I’m Dying. She gave us a contribution then, and she pledged to do what she can to help. My co-director, Renée Bergan, had been telling me that we needed a break in between the hard-hitting scenes of poverty and inequality. We both wanted to frame these within Haiti’s rich cultural traditions and wanted to have a krik, krak. One day, we were waiting for one of our camera assistants, and his wife was braiding her daughter’s hair just then, so Renée filmed it. It seemed a perfect metaphor to weave the women’s stories together, and to weave the audience into the story. It was serendipitous that Edwidge – who is extremely generous with her time and talent – ended her collection, Krik? Krak!, on a piece with a mother braiding her daughter’s hair. We asked Edwidge if we could use this and adapt it and she was thrilled.

How did you settle on just five women—Marie-Jeanne, Solange, Frisline, Thérèse, and Hélène?
SCHULLER: First of all, it should be noted that these are not their real names; we wanted to help protect their identities. Back up a little bit: these women were part of a grassroots group supported by a women’s NGO, who wanted me to make a film about them. I said that I would write a book, but they said that it wasn’t good enough. They know the power of media to move people; as you know the Haitian expressions tande ak wè se de and sa je pa wè, kè pa tounen. So why these five women? We initially interviewed eleven women from this collective and noticed six, seven who were the most comfortable with the camera. When we got back to the U.S. we began to outline what the story is. We shifted our focus to a woman by woman approach, where each woman highlighted a particular element of Haitian life: Marie-Jeanne was education, Solange violence, and so on. So from this six, seven we chose five based on what story they would highlight.

Did they have any initial hesitation about having their lives chronicled?
SCHULLER: Not at all. It was their idea. We met with them four times before we began filming, to discuss the risks and the logistics—that I wasn’t even fully aware of—of making a film.

Do you think Haitian women are given enough credit for what they contribute to Haiti?
ULYSSE: No, they do not. But then neither do most women all over the world. That is just the sexist, male-dominated world we occupy, which I would in some circles—in Haitian communities—is more like the middle ages. I have absolutely no patience for it and am in awe in seeing what women in Haiti—of different class positions, locations color and so on—must negotiate on a daily basis. I am very much a dyas when it comes to this issue and know that it is dyas privilege that allows me to not have to deal with it.

After the 2010 earthquake some additional footage was added to the documentary to inform the fans of the documentary about the whereabouts of these women. Is Potan Mitan the start of an entire series? It could go on forever.
SCHULLER: Respectfully, no. I personally meet with them whenever I’m back in Haiti. But the purpose of the film was met: helping them share their stories with people who buy the clothes they sew, citizens of countries like the U.S. who have a heavy influence in Haiti’s affairs.

What are some of the things you learned from being part of the Poto Mitan documentary team?
ULYSSE: We, especially those of us in the diaspora, do not need to speak for Haitians in Haiti. We have to make sure we help the ones who are so limited get access to the mike. Haitian women can and do speak for themselves they understand their conditions and are doing what they know in order to redress them.

What are some challenges that came with producing the documentary?
SCHULLER: The filming was done after the worst of the violence, but it was still dicey. I visited a woman’s house to set up a shoot and because of my presence, neighborhood thugs roughed her up. We’ve been in touch many times since, and she’s okay. We also drove 12 hours to meet with the Dominican owners of the free trade zone, only to be told that they weren’t available. So we handed a camera to one of the union leaders, who said he would be able to film, no problem. But he was pressured by the managers all the same.

Which of the women featured in the documentary inspired you the most?
ULYSSE: Each woman represents a different generation, situation and set of issues. That’s why I like the film and supported it to the extent that I have. It give you something that is quite rare for us, because Haiti is too often explicated in singular terms. As I have mentioned elsewhere, we have always been plural. There is a single story for women in Haiti but a number of stories. Years ago I met this woman who said, “Chak moun gen ti istwa Ayiti pa yo”, and she is absolutely right. Everyone has their own version of Haitian history or story of Haiti. In other words they all inspired different things in me and made me proud to see them come together the way they did to confront these enduring problems.

Haitian women are rightfully called Poto Mitan, the epicenter of Haitian economy, and as your documentary points out, the crux of global economy as well. So how come they’re so little valued by some?
SCHULLER: In short, what Black feminists call “intersectionality” – the multiple forms of oppression based on distinct but overlapping identities, such as of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and parental status – and “structural violence” – the long term inequalities built in systems of colonialism and slavery. As Faye Harrison argued, structural violence is gendered. Neoliberal globalization increases burdens on women in several ways. Women are often targeted for low-wage work, in part because of patriarchal norms and the ideology that sees women as more submissive, because women’s traditional caregiving role precludes organizing trade unions, or because of recitations of older gender ideologies of “nimble fingers.” Transnational feminists argued that despite implicit male biases, the social welfare state provided a modicum of legal protection and social services that benefited women and other marginalized populations. The shift towards a neoliberal model eroded these protections, especially through structural adjustment programs. The privatization of public services, placing greater burden for social reproduction onto individual families, is more greatly felt by women because of traditional roles.

What have you observed about the way viewers have reacted to the documentary?
ULYSSE: Well having screened the film in several different venues—mostly universities and colleges and or at conferences— it has been fascinating to see the range of response. From the folks who get instantly involved in the politics and want to find out what they can do to the ones who are more concerned with issues of aesthetics and what it means that this film was done by white people. I like reactions and think they are good because at least it means viewers are not being passive they are actually engaging with the work.

Have the five women featured in the documentary have had the chance to screen it?
SCHULLER: Yes, two of them who lived in camps had a screening in their camps. They both reported a turnout of hundreds of people, and the screening triggered a conversation that lasted for hours. Other grassroots groups have used it as well in their consciousness raising efforts. It strikes a raw nerve, portraying a day-to-day lived experience but the women connect these realities with a very articulate, intersectional analysis as to why low-income people, particularly women, find themselves in marginal situation.

What advice do you have for those who want to create a documentary in Haiti or elsewhere?
SCHULLER: I would start with the question of why you want to make the film? Is the impulse coming from the subjects of the films themselves or is it coming from somewhere else? Really it’s important to consider what our roles are, and what the camera amplifies. If you’re a filmmaker from another country, even in the Diaspora, there are systems of inequality behind the camera. In addition, people in a foreign audience will have a lens that will reinterpret based on their own realities and worldview, so it’s important to be aware that what is being portrayed maybe radically reinterpreted.

We know that your involvement with Haiti goes beyond Poto Mitan.
SCHULLER: Wouch! I’ve been teaching research methods at the State University of Haiti and working with these students to complete research on the internally displaced persons—IDP—camps. I’ve written dozens of Huffington Post articles and a couple of reports, and took the research – with my Haitian students at CUNY – to Washington, both Congress and the State Department. I’ve been collaborating with grassroots groups in Haiti on the research, on reporting findings, giving talks at events, etc. I am working with colleagues at the State University to revise the research methods text I’ve written, and will focus on supporting the research capacity. In 2011 I worked with dozens of colleagues – half in Haiti – activists and journalists as well as scholars – to put together a collection of analyses, Tectonic Shifts: Haiti since the Earthquake. It was published in advance of the second anniversary of the earthquake. We got support from FOKAL to translate it into Kreyòl and it will – sidyevle – be ready to launch in October, for the International Creole Day.

Above: Claudine Michel, one of the Associate producers of the documentary, and the director of the Black Studies Department at University of California, Santa Barbara.

What were your impressions of Haiti the first time you visited?
SCHULLER: I had difficulty sleeping, even though I was tired. Haiti’s problems, to the extent that they were discussed at the conference, were portrayed as discrete: Haiti needs a change in the social contract, and it is coming. Being there, alone save for two large boxes full of kitchen supplies, research materials, and a couple of nice outfits, it felt anything but simple. I remained overwhelmed for quite a while. Two months before I went to Haiti, a free trade zone was created along the Haiti and Dominican Republic border in Wanament. One month before, Amiot Metayer had been assassinated, triggering a violent response from his group of hitmen. A political crisis, talked about for four years, began in earnest. People began counting the dead. NGOs, especially those friendly to Aristide’s opposition, began to close, with their staff and board members in mawonaj, in hiding. My contact at a women’s NGO stayed at a few of her friends’ houses during this period. Needless to say, it was difficult to meet with NGOs to plan my research.

What do you wish some non-Haitians knew about Haiti?
SCHULLER: First, the role the Haitian Revolution played in ending slavery worldwide. It was the first time slaves gained their own freedom – on their terms. And it triggered the abolition of the slave trade three years later. We in the US owe our ‘manifest destiny’ to the successful slave revolt in Haiti, as France abandoned its stake in a third of the US landmass, virtually giving it to the US after losing Haiti.

Second, the poverty and vulnerability to disasters that the media portrays is in no small part because of the way that the US and other foreign powers have done to punish Haiti for this act of independence. In 1825 Haiti had to pay France in order to recognize Haitian independence, to compensate French plantation owners for their loss of “property” – including slaves. The US occupation begun in 1915 set the stage for Duvalier. Finally, policies championed by the US – ‘neoliberalism’ – opening Haiti for the “free market” systematically destroyed Haiti’s economy. All of these impact Haitian women’s lives and create the problems that are visible.
Finally, despite all this, Haitian people are extraordinarily good at supporting one another, at collective survival, and at building a life. Haitian culture is rich with proverbs, language, music, poetry, food, etc. Haiti has so much to offer the world, if only people would be willing to listen.

Do you hope to be involved with a project like Poto Mitan in the future?
ULYSSE: Not necessarily. I will continue to support different projects that require more hands on deck as they arise and when they are in alignment with I believe in.

Photos: Ulysse from the Wesleyan Newsletter; Michel photo by Aaron Salcido

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

What becomes of those who have been deported when they are sent back to Haiti? Rachèle Magloire and Chantal Regnault explore this in their award-winning documentary Deported.

In the first part of the article series, the two filmmakers discussed their backgrounds, how they met, and their first encounters with deportees in Haiti. Here, they discuss their work further.

What was the process like in putting together the documentary?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: First, we did a lot of research to find [deportees]. In fact, we learned quickly that the “deported” love hanging out together. And so, we were able to meet a number of them. We met many officials and key persons involved in the deportation process and deportees’ integration into Haitian society through organizations defending human rights, especially the ECHR, which—at that time—led a study on the issue, in order to make recommendations to the authorities. We also took part in the rehabilitation program of the deportees led by IOM—International Organization for Immigration. Then we started to make contact with their [the deportees’] family members who lived mainly in North America. This is how we were able to follow some of the people we met, so that each of them could recount this terrible experience of deportation.

In 2008, as part of a project with the ECHR for the stigmatization of deportees in Haiti, we made a rough cut of twenty minutes. In January 2010, we finished filming. Then there was the long process of editing. Meanwhile, we showed a first draft to Raoul Peck and his production company Velvet Film. He was interested in our film, and helped us to finish it. We finished editing and post-production in July 2012.

CHANTAL REGNAULT: As Rachèle explained, the first phase of research was conducted from meetings with prisoners, one leading us to the other, allowing us to remember those who become the protagonists of the film, and also a phase of deepening our knowledge of the issue of deportation through reading materials and a series of interviews with government officials and police in Haiti as well as specialists [involved in the] migrant rights in the United States and Canada. This work has not been used since we eventually decided to make the message of the film exclusively about prisoners and their families in North America.

How are deportees viewed in Haiti?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: Deportees are generally frowned upon. And as many times, the highest authorities have associated them with waves of crime in the country, it has reinforced the sense that the deported citizens are actively involved in Haiti’s criminal life. However, we must also say that if someone who is involved in a kidnapping speaks English, he is identified as a deportee, although this is not always the case. There are also people in the Diaspora who are involved in criminal networks, and aren’t deported.

CHANTAL REGNAULT: The Haitian public is generally afraid of deported criminals “made in USA” and also despise them for ruining the opportunity they had to live and work in North America. The fear of the deportees was at its height in December 2006 when the then-Prime Minister clearly linked the rise of crime in Haiti—especially kidnappings—to the presence of the deportees on national territory. We had so much research for the film.

Were you met with a lot of hesitation, when you were looking for interviewees?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: On the side of the deportees themselves, not so much, except for those who had been able to integrate into society, and had managed to make people forget that they had been deported. These guys did want to talk on camera. But in most cases, the individuals who appeared in the documentary film generously shared their experiences—and it was usually quite painful. Also, it was more difficult to get women to talk, but there are nonetheless women deportees—even if they are less in number than the men.

CHANTAL REGNAULT: In the case of deportees with a criminal past, it wasn’t everyone who agreed to participate in the film. We had to rely on our personal contacts and the trust we earned with some. As pointed out by Rachèle, those who were able to integrate [in Haitian society] did not want to re-assume the identity of a deportee given the aura of stigma that surrounds them; it was the same with those with criminal records in Haiti and that for obvious reasons.

Do you think the view of deportees will change?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: Definitely, I think that our film can help change the perception of the deportees in Haiti, and elsewhere, because you know that deportations are done in all countries from the United States and Canada. In the case of the United States, the most massive deportations are to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean.

CHANTAL REGNAULT: I agree with Rachèle about the impact that our film can have on the perception that the public has of Haitian deportees. Screenings in Port-au-Prince at Fokal and in Jacmel at Place d’Armes in December 2012 and again in Fokal in March 2013, have already proved that. It was a great moment when the lights were turned back on and members of the audience found themselves face to face with the film’s protagonists in the flesh! A passionate dialogue that could not stop got started.

[Photos: Furnished by Chantal Regnault and Rachèle Magloire.]

This is the second part in the series of article on the documentary Deported. Be sure to look out for Part 3. And do visit the PAGE FOR THE DEPORTED DOCUMENTARY and the filmmakers’ website

The conversation with filmmakers Rachèle Magloire and Chantal Regnault continues in the last installment of our three-part article on the highly-acclaimed documentary Deported.

What did you note about the deportees?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: Each deportee had a history, and it was usually a history of difficult times. They did not come from the same paths, even if we found commonalities between them. But they all had an experience that marked their passage in a North American prison. This passage and the “return” in a rather hostile society is a life lesson for them. Now it is up to each of them—according to his “background”, his education and family support—to turn this lesson in a positive way. But the film also has scenes shot in North America, which allowed us to provoke further reflection on the integration of immigrants in North America and address the issue of the emergence of crime in that region.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: Same answer as Rachèle.

How long did it take for you to gather material for the documentary and to wrap it up?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: We started the research in 2006 and completed the installation in 2012, so six years!
CHANTAL REGNAULT: I want to clarify that we did not produce it in six consecutive years. Various internal and external factors sometimes slowed filming considerably, and the earthquake of January 12, 2010 occurred when we started mounting the long version of the documentary film. We found the money for the post-production work at the end of 2011.

Do you prefer fiction filmmaking documentary filmmaking over?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: I’ve never made fiction films, except for a few experiments with short films and some commercials. I love the documentary format because it allows you to follow certain ideas, but fiction is also attractive to me. But this form of cinema doesn’t have the same elements. And in the absence of a film industry, it is much more difficult to create the conditions to complete a very successful fiction feature. But time will tell the rest.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: This is my first documentary film. I’ve never done fiction.

What advice do you have for those Who wish to do documentaries?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: To always stay open and listen to a lot of research to understand the subject you’re talking about so you can come out with something intelligent.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: To have a good time on writing the project and to leave room to deviate, take the time to establish trust with the future protagonists of the film, and remain constantly open to elements that luck can bring.

Did you Have a particular goal in making this documentary?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: I didn’t have a particular purpose, except to deepen my knowledge on the subject, and as with other documentaries, open the horizons of the audience to a reality they don’t know too well. Generally, we are interested in marginalized societies and people who don’t really have a place to express themselves. In the case of prisoners, that was exactly the case, but what attracted me the most was that this allowed me to not only explore a Haitian reality on our island, but also to get an understanding of what was happening in the host society that had led to the deportation.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: As I said before, I was long aware of the plight of the deported in Haiti, realized that there was this injustice and the catastrophic human consequences engendered by the policy of systematic abuse and deportation, especially in the the United States. [The purpose] of making the documentary was to firstly shed light on the real situation of these people being cut off from their past life and to lead the viewer to not only question the rights of immigrants who were criminals, but also the very notion of identity. We live in a time when global migration has produced a wide hybrid population that straddles at least two countries, two cultures, two languages.

What do you think of the current Haitian filmmaking industry?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: One cannot speak of a cinema industry in Haiti today. Moreover, there is no movie theater, so no real market opportunities exist for the distribution of films. There are no funds specifically dedicated to cinema for film production, so those who make movies do so on a small scale and use a lot of imagination to finance their production and distribution. Fortunately, there are some institutions like FOKAL supporting such projects. But, you have to convince these institutions.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: What’s also missing is the training of future technicians and screenwriters.

What plans do you have for your filmmaking career?
RACHÈLE MAGLOIRE: I will continue my work. I am working on several projects, but for now they are in their infancy so I prefer not to talk about them. I’ve also worked on other film projects, including Raoul Peck’s Deadly Assistance. I was the Director of Photography, and implementation of the second team in Haiti.
CHANTAL REGNAULT: I don’t have the time for another documentary project. I plan on publishing a book of photos based on the experiences that I had in Haiti during the 25 years I devoted to it.

Be sure to visit the website of Fanal Productions HERE and take a look at the filmmakers’ FACEBOOK PAGE.

Budding documentary filmmaker Dave Fils-Aime has always had a little activist growing in him. A graduate of Yale University, Fils-Aime grew up in Martissant, Haiti and attended Saint Jean l’Evangeliste, an all-boy Catholic school. He says he and his family moved to the United States before the start of high school. “Although I was happy to finally be able to visit America,” Fils-Aime recalls, “my parents’ decision to stay in the country did not go well with me. I was saddened by the idea of having to forfeit the opportunity of attending my dream school with some of my closest friends.”

With time, the teen accepted his destiny and excelled in school and graduated as one of the top students in his high school in South Florida. Fils-Aime received a Miami Herald Silver Knight Award winner for his outstanding academic excellence and community service. His entrance into Yale provided him a platform as a budding community leader. He I served as the president of Yale’s Klib Kreyol (Haitian Cultural Organization). During a one-year leave of absence from Yale, Fils-Aime interned for Organizing for America, the successor organization of Obama for America during President Obama’s first term. He also served as a community organizer for the city of Miramar in Florida, which led to his being chosen to drive the White House Press Corps in a presidential motorcade during a visit by President Barack Obama to Miami.

Fils-Aime’s awareness about Haitian causes grew when he worked on community leader Marleine Bastien’s congressional campaign as a Volunteer Coordinator. He also wrote his senior thesis on Haiti during the early 2010s.

After turning down the opportunity to work on President Obama’s reelection campaign, Fils-Aime acccepted an offer from the United Nations Development Programme in Haiti, where he worked as a donor relations and resource mobilization consultant. While in Haiti, Fils-Aime launched a youth-driven program Basketball to Uplift the Youth (Baskètbòl pou Ankadre Lajenès).

Somehow, filmmaking emerged in this equation. Fils-Aime founded DaliReel Productions, his film company, and his fixation on the South of Haiti provided the inspiration for his first Haiti-focused production entitled, well, South of Haiti. The documentary was touted “The Best Tourism Video You’ll See All Year” by travel website Skift. It was Staff Pick by the video sharing site Vimeo and was also singled out by Canada.com as one of its “Monday Inspiration” Videos.

Dave Fils-Aime looking very pensive on a documentary set.

DaliReel Productions is your very own production company. What drew you to film and documentary filmmaking.

Well, one of my main roles as the Director of Operations of the Yale Men’s Basketball was to film the team’s games and to coordinate film exchange with other teams. I was also responsible for putting together a highlight video of the team’s best plays of the season to be played at the end of year banquet. Through this experience, I became extremely interested in filming and editing, and in ultimately using it as a medium to educate people about Haiti.

This documentary about Haiti is your very first production?

Actually, when I led the Yale International Relations Association election observation trip to Haiti, I took the initiative to film the entire experience and to use the footage to put together a documentary film titled Ayiti Leve: The Political Reconstruction of Haiti. That was my very first production. Although we have had private screenings of the film, we have not yet made it available to the public. Over the past year, I’ve been working on an updated version with my collaborator James Murphy, and we hope to make it available to the public in the coming months.

What drew you to the southern part of Haiti, and what ultimately made you feel that this documentary needed to be a reality?

It was actually through a retreat organized by some co-workers in collaboration with the tour guide company J’adore le Sud that I was able to discover the south of Haiti. It was my first time visiting the area and I was simply amazed by the region’s beauty, the breathtaking beaches, the magnificent caves, the wonderful waterfalls, and the fascinating historical sites that have stood the test of time. I felt that I had an obligation to share this experience with the world, to show a Haiti that most don’t even know exist. But I knew that I couldn’t do it on my own if I wanted the end product to be a topnotch piece. A year earlier, I had met filmmaker Alex Horner in Haiti through my good friend Jimmy Toussaint’s Haiti volunteer program. When Alex showed me some of his work, I was particularly impressed by his strong technical skills and great vision. He suggested the possibility of joining forces in the future to produce short films/documentaries on Haiti, and I expressed my strong interest in forging such a partnership. So, as soon as I returned to Port-au-Prince from the trip down south, I contacted Alex about doing a project on the region and he was immediately on board. Alex recruited Nick Mihalevich, a sound technician, to join us on the project, and a few months later they both flew down to Haiti from Minnesota to capture images and sounds over a period of 10 days.

Filmmaking can be tough territory. What are some of the things you’ve learned that you feel are must-know information for those who want to get into filmmaking.

Filmmaking is most definitely a tough territory. The most important lesson I’ve learned and that I would like to share with people interested in entering the field is that if you’re not willing to give it your all, do not even think about pursuing a project. Because even when you pour all your effort into a project, there is no guarantee that it will pan out. If I had not been fully intent on seeing the South of Haiti project become a reality, it would have remained simply a beautiful proposal on paper. I sent the project proposal for sponsorship to government ministries and a wide range of private enterprises, but we did not receive any positive feedback. Unfazed by the lack of interest in the project, Alex, Nick and I pooled our own funds together to finance the project. The lesson learned is: if you and your team are not passionate enough about a project to make sacrifices for it, the project will not become a reality.

Visit Dave Fils-Aime’s YouTube Channel| Like Dave Fils-Aime’s Haiti Basketball Organization Page on Facebook!

It was only a matter of time before Jennifer Brea did a documentary. An experienced journalist, Brea has covered hard-hitting stories and issues ranging from development and aid in Tanzania, to Chinese business involvement in China. She has written articles for such prestigious publications as The American, and is very much accustomed to going deeper than the surface issues.

With her documentary-in-progress Canary in a Coal Mine, she is dipping into more personal waters. The doc explores Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. The TED fellow discussed her background and work with Kreyolicious.com.

Tell us about more about yourself.

I was born in New York and grew up in Florida. My grandparents on my father’s side emigrated from Haiti in the 1960s. My grandmother was half Chinese. While on the one hand Haiti is a very distant and abstract place for me–I speak French because I learned it in school and only know a few words of Kreyol–the years I spent as a child playing in their house and all the stories they shared had a profound effect. They are the reason I spent my early twenties running around China and Africa.

Your film project Canary in a Coal Mine is about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

Three years ago, I came down with the worst flu of my life. Two years ago, I forgot how to write my own name. Then, I became more ill than I ever knew was possible. It is not an exaggeration to say I thought I was dying. My neurologist told me mine were the symptoms of conversion disorder, caused by some stress or repressed trauma I might not even be able to recall. Every pain, every symptom–even the severe sinus infection for which I took antibiotics and recovered–were physical manifestations of some vague, psychic disturbance.

I was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or more accurately, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).

Numerous studies over the last thirty years have documented the many biochemical, immunological, neurological, and epigenetic abnormalities that are characteristic of this disease. Patients have altered microbiomes and pronounced mitochondrial dysfunction. Unfortunately, many of these tests are either not standard or aren’t commercially available. There have also been documented outbreaks involving dozens or even hundreds of people in a single town, school or hospital, suggesting that there is an infectious trigger.

Despite decades of science, many patients, for the first several months and years of illness, meet with doctors who do not believe they are really ill. This is because the disease is outside of their training; it is simply not taught in medical schools. Worse yet, in some corners, it still being taught as a psychological disorder. Patients are told to go about their lives, exercise, or otherwise maintain a level of activity that can lead to permanent disability. In some countries, there have even been cases of forced psychiatric institutionalization.

The film follows the lives of several people living with ME and examines the impact it’s had not only on their lives, but on their relationships, and on the lives of those around them.

We hope this is a story that touches not only our patient community or people living with a chronic illness. Everyone at some point will face a difficult, confusing, or scary health issue; or it will happen to someone they love; or they will confront some other obstacle that will alter the course of their lives and destroy the image they once had of their personal future. When that happens, how will we react? Will it destroy us? Or will we be able to make beautiful things grow from those dark places?

Have to ask…what inspired the title of the doc?

Canary in a Coal Mine was an instinct rather than the outcome of a long intellectual deliberation. I thought “What the f*** is going on with me? This can’t be right.” And I believed then, as I do know, that if I had spent the first twenty-eight years of my life living up in the mountains or somewhere else pristine, this just would not have happened. I think it’s clear that chronic illnesses are increasing, and it’s not just because we are living longer. I got sick at 28. I believe the way we have changed our environment–what we eat, how we sleep, the toxins and chemicals we are exposed to everyday–wreak havoc on our immune systems.

There is another, deeper meaning of the title. And that’s that this disease’s history reveals deep flaws in our societies’ approach to medicine and the delivery of healthcare that I think everyone needs to know about. You can’t mess up with a disease this badly and not be making similarly grave errors, or have equally dangerous blind spots, elsewhere.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as a first-time filmmaker?

It’s funny, I don’t feel as though I’ve faced any challenges specific to being a first-time filmmaker. The biggest challenge is making a film while severely ill. Shooting is intense, and so we can only shoot about one day a month, maybe two. Even as we’ve been editing videos for our Kickstarter campaign or reaching out to potential subjects, there’s always this hard wall I run into where the more I do, the less I can do. This illness is so up and down that it’s hard to know if it’s just that the angle I’m laying at is too high, or if I sat up or walked too much two days ago, and I’ll recover with a day’s rest, or if I really am wearing myself down to a nub. Certainly, in the last six months, I’ve had fewer and fewer good days.

But in answer to your question, while there might be hurdles down the line with respect to funding or distribution that are just easier to surmount when you’ve done this before, where the creative part is concerned, the actual act of making the film, I don’t feel being green has been any disadvantage. It helps to have someone who knows the ropes! I’m working with a great creative producer, Kiran Chitanvis.

A still from the documentary Canary in a Coal Mine.

Your past career as a print journalist brought you from Beijing to East Africa. How has that experience shaped you?

I learned that many of the stories we hear from these places may have little to do with what matters to the people there, or what they would rank in the top five most important trends in their country or culture. It’s about the market back home. When reporters choose which stories to tell and how to tell them, it has to somehow fit into the existing narrative. For years, half of the stories coming out of China were about human rights. Not to say that the struggle for broader political and social rights is not immensely important, but there was so much more going on at the time that was crucial to understanding how China was transforming itself that just wasn’t getting covered.

It makes me a bit afraid of the prospects for our film. We are trying to bring about a paradigm shift with respect to my disease. It’s easier to get the word out when you are telling a story people already think they know, or if it tweaks what they already know in a pleasantly surprising way. Charging through the gates on a purple unicorn? Not so much…

Did you receive formal training as a filmmaker?

Ha! Not unless you count the triple features my mother took me to as a kid. We’d buy a pair of tickets, then exist the theater four to seven hours later.

A documentary film, like a feature film is a collaboration of sort. What have you learned about creative partnerships through this whole process?

First, it’s good to win the lottery. My collaborator, Kiran Chitanvis, is amazing and we hooked up almost by accident. It’s important to find someone with whom there is a strong sense of a shared vision. The details will sort themselves out. Chemistry helps. So too does working with someone you like and who is generous and decent.

What’s the most inspiring, thought-provoking documentary you’ve ever viewed?

I am a big fan of both Super 8 and Sarah Polley, and loved Stories We Tell. I am, as many, a student of Errol Morris’s films. I suppose it’s really about loving creative nonfiction much more than I love either fiction or the straight-forward reporting of the facts. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it needs a story and a storyteller to really get at the capital tee sort of truth: the true heart of things.

I was also very much inspired by Rebirth, a film that followed survivors and bereaved families for nearly a decade after 9/11. The intimacy and connection between the subjects and the director interviewing them, Jim Whitaker, is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

Any tips for those wanting to do documentaries of their own?

Before embarking on this project, I reached out to friends and acquaintances in film for advice on “how to get started.” The best advice I received was, “Go forth! Make film!” In other words, the only way to make a documentary for the first time is to make a film for the first time. Thinking about writing a book, or making a movie, or jumping out of a plane does not get you to the doing, and it is only in the doing that you can start to realize what you know, what you can do, and what help you need from others.

Other than that, find a story you feel you have no choice but to tell.

Please show your support for this filmmaker by donating to her Kickstarter campaign! CLICK HERE.