Films from Afar: An Interview with Haitian Filmmakers
By Jessica Ann Peavy
In celebration of the bi-centennial of Haiti’s independence, Haitian filmmakers Michele Stephenson and Guetty Felin have put together a one-time film festival to give homage to Haitian cinema. Haitian art and culture are often over looked by the art world, and Stephens and Felin hope to bring attention to these filmmakers and break the stigma the often clouds this tiny country while giving Americans another view of Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora.
Can you explain the main differences from making films in third world nation such as Haiti, versus making film in the U.S. or France where there are many more resources?
GF: Part of the difficulties of making films in Haiti comes from the unstable political situation and its getting more and more unstable these days. And there’s no real infrastructure that exists to support you as a filmmaker. There’s no cultural politics in Haiti. I think filmmakers are very isolated. They haven’t built an industry. So the difficulty comes from the fact that people in Haiti are working with a government that doesn’t put cinema on their priority list. But nonetheless, there are countries that are worse off than we are but have cultural politics, they have a cinematic industry, and place where you can go that has archives, and you can go and see films, and use them. Everything that’s been done in Haiti, even by foreign filmmakers, does not even stay in Haiti. There is not one copy of the "Comedians" which we’re trying to get for the festival, just as a classic. So our government has not been responsible in the last decades to say, okay, you shot a film in Haiti, we want a copy, this is where it’s going to be, it’s going to be available for the people. But I think that it’s getting there, I mean, we’re looking at new forms of cinema that are coming out in Haiti these days, that are becoming blockbusters in Haiti! And they are films that are shot in very little time, on video, and digital video, and shown in theaters, and people are coming out to see them.
MS: If you look at filmmaking it’s really a luxury art. It’s one of the most costly art forms. Only now has technology started to democratize the art form. It’s not like taking a brush of paint and painting, which is a form of art expression in Haiti that is very evolved precisely because of the low cost in being creative. So anywhere, even if you are here in the United States, people who make films are people who have money. It’s very difficult, whether you are a person of color, or a person of lesser means to really penetrate that art form. So, it’s just that much harder in a place like Haiti. What technology has done has helped in the process. The few that I do know making films in Haiti, and who’ve decided to commit themselves to that art form there, have their own little editing and final cut pro system that they can actually travel with on a laptop. The films that Guetty was talking about like, "The fear of loving," those films made in Haiti, are made on video, that are very much kind of like soap operas, you see a lot that trend also in west Africa, like Ghana and Nigeria. And these filmmakers are actually doctors by profession. Some have their day jobs and they shoot their films on the weekends. And the actors have day jobs and work on the weekends to make these films. They have had a very popular impact, and "Fear of loving"…
GF: Which we’re going to be showing at the festival…
MS: Right. They were screening it at one of the large theaters in Haiti at the same time as one of these Schwartenager films apparently, and the Schwartzenager film…
GF: It was Terminator 3…
MS: Was it Terminator 3? I don’t know, but anyway, the Schwartzenager film was scheduled to be in the huge theater and Fear of Loving was to be in the smaller theater, but so many people showed up to see their own faces, their own people on the screen, that they had to switch the venues, because people wanted to see themselves reflected.
GF: Reginald Lubin lived outside of Haiti and he’s a doctor, and you know, he came back. He’ll never leave Haiti again because he’s found a way of being in Haiti that’s important to him, that’s making films. People are thirsty for their own images, you know, and I think that although we may say that Haiti is on the tail end of development, I think they understand what’s going on in terms of globalization and they know that if they don’t make their own images that they will not survive visually.
American Filmmakers are often influenced by European filmmakers and study European filmmakers such as Felini and Truffaut. Spike Lee often influences African American contemporary artists. Who do you think influences Haitian cinema? If there is no real infrastructure for cinema in Haiti, who are the filmmakers learning from and how do they learn the craft of filmmaking?
GF: People do not have access to those types of films. They don’t have access to Felini films, so they’re kind of like learning as their making which is interesting because it shows you that you don’t necessarily need to have any outside influence in order for you to be able to tell your story. Now of course you need the techniques of being able to execute your story from point A to point Z and some of these films may be lacking in techniques, but there is no influence. I mean with people like Reginald Lubin, and the others, these folks have not seen a whole lot of films.
MS: No, I wouldn’t say that…
GF: No, they haven’t seen films. Where would they go and get access to Foreign, Felini, films and stuff like that.
MS: They definitely have an American influence.
GF: They have an American influence, but it’s not in their films
MS: And some cases it’s actually an influence from television. Or, even some of the Latino…
GF: Soap operas
MS: Yeah, soap operas influence the filmmakers. But you can’t say that there’s one huge influence. There’s definitely influence from the outside. There are influences from American films that do get seen, because those are one’s that get seen in Haiti for the most part. They don’t really have art films that arrive there for people to see. They don’t know the latest art films or independent films that come.
GF: It’s the big budget
MS: For example, the Schwarzenegger film.
GF: But (Haitian Filmmakers) are not telling those stories.
MS: I remember watching television series like Dallas or Dynasty, or things of that sort that create a certain influence. But it’s a variety of things because you have some filmmakers who went to the film school of UCLA. Or some people have a PBS way of doing documentaries.
GF: I was talking specifically about the fiction stuff that’s coming out today. You can’t say that this (film) feels like someone else’s work.
MS: There is one who studied in California, or people who come from a Canadian broadcasting company, and establish themselves back in Haiti, these influences are arriving. I think in the years to come, you know, there may be an aesthetic that’s developed, but it’s not there yet. Well, I wouldn’t say that’s it’s not there yet, I’d say there’s a lot of variety in influences that are in people’s heads and they might not know exactly where they’re coming from, but they’re expressed differently.
GF: But the stories in terms of the fiction stuff, the big blockbusters, the ones that are making the news these days in Haiti, the stories are very typically Haitian. They’re typically Haitian in the sense that it’s what the Haitian population is preoccupied with. Stories like, marrying between, or going from one class to another. You can find that in the early cinema also, and you still have it in the Indian Bollywood films, where a guy falls in love with his maid, that kind of a thing. The Haitian audience recognizes themselves in these stories, in these people. So it’s not like they’re there making films that are distant from their audience, and trying to copy someone else’s style. The more films that they see, the more that they can be critical. That’s a problem also in Haiti, because it is so tiny that people have don’t have any distance really from their work. But that’s being established more and more. I mean, groups of filmmakers that have decided to do screenings of each others films a be able to criticize, which is something that Haitian people have a hard time doing, having self criticism, you know, about their work. But that will definitely help once they can start doing that.
Where do you see the future of Haitian Cinema? Do you see it growing over the next few years, or do you feel that the politics in Haiti are going to pause it for a while? Do you feel that Haiti will be able to develop a system where cinema can thrive the way it has in other small countries? Do you feel that a lot of Haitian filmmakers will come to the U.S. or to Europe as their only outlet to be able to make bigger projects?
MS: I think there’s going to be constant back and forth, it’s a flowing thing. People from the Diaspora will go to Haiti and try to work there and maybe successfully or not successfully go back and come back, it’s a very fluid kind of thing, but I only see greater momentum building. And I think we conceive of Haitian cinema as even broader than actually being there physically. It’s a broader thing, because Diaspora is a huge part of Haiti, and it’s a huge part of the influence on Haiti and back and forth. So it really is an exchange and a way of being that goes beyond just being there physically. I don’t want to create that rigid: oh it’s not Haitian cinema if it’s not in Haiti. Because conditions are so difficult and because politics are so unpredictable, we’ve allowed for ourselves to have a survival tactic that exists beyond the boarders and has an identity of its own.
GF: And Haiti is constantly being redefined. Haitian filmmakers, people of Haitian decent who are making films inside or outside of Haiti, their voice is very important, and if we can be able to fluctuate from one to another and say okay this is your Haiti and this is my Haiti and not say oh this is not Haitian, because that does not exist. And I think a lot of the time we talk about authenticity. What is authentically Haitian? And you realize that you don’t know it. It may feel familiar to you but that person who’s living in little Haiti in Miami is authentic too in his vision of what Haiti is, so we’re constantly redefining it, recreating Haitian cinema and through this festival we can do that, because we’re saying here we are, we have a wide variety of films and there are different voices but it’s still Haiti.
The Haiti on Screen Festival will take place March 31st through April 4th 2004 with screenings at Cantor Film center, Shomberg center for research, The Brooklyn Museum, The American Museum of the Moving Image.
