Much of Haiti’s cinema has grappled with exile and the memory of what was promised by its creation as the first Black republic. A rebellion of the enslaved, the 1804 Haitian Revolution opened a horizon of liberation. Yet the shackles of colonization and slavery were never entirely broken. As filmmaking arrived on the island, political and social difficulties persisted, eventually coinciding with the terror of the Duvalier regimes. Resisting conditions of censorship, violence, and scarcity, Haitian filmmakers emerged to make cinema a pathway towards a remembered vision of self-determination and sovereignty.
Exile and Memory in Haitian Cinema celebrates artmaking in the service of autonomous, full and varied images of Haiti. Ranging from the very beginnings of Haitian cinema to the present, the films mediate distances that are not only geographic, bridging intervals of memory and separations of families.
With thanks to guest curator Yasmina Price, Yale University; the artists involved, including Miryam Charles, Arnold Antonin, and Raoul Peck; Christina Demetriou (Oyster Films); Serge Abbiad (La Distributrice de Films); Adèle Dupuy (Velvet Film); Léa Daudon (mk2 Films); TiCorn; and Jed Rapfogel (Anthology Film Archives). This series features selections from the film series Price presented at Anthology Film Archives in February 2024, Struggle of Memory: Forgetting Haiti, Remembering Ayiti.
This series is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti.