Anthology Film Archives - Calendar Events

MAMBAR PIERRETTE

Wednesday, January 31

Distributed by Icarus Films.

Though MAMBAR PIERRETTE represents the first fictional feature by French-Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam – who visited Anthology in 2019 to present theatrical runs of her remarkable THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN and CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE – the new film closely resembles her earlier films in its observational, de-dramatized focus on daily life and its dedication to portraying a strong-willed, unapologetic, and charismatic female protagonist. With the beginning of the school year in the city of Douala, a long line of customers come to Mambar Pierrette, the neighborhood dressmaker, to have their clothes ready for upcoming social events and ceremonies. More than a seamstress, Pierrette is the confidant of her customers. But when it starts pouring and the rain threatens to flood her workshop – one of many misfortunes she will be forced to bear – Pierrette struggles to stay afloat.

“Mbakam’s lucid studies of labor and displacement in the lives of Cameroonian women seem to grow in political breadth with every effort, from her mother’s doorstep, to an expat-owned beauty parlor, to a sex worker’s bed. […] As with her previous work, MAMBAR PIERRETTE is attuned to the rhythms of laboring women and the communities enriched by their presence. Her pivot to fiction feels anchored by the same careful eye which surveilled Sabine – the salon manager of CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE – framing her in mirrors, between clients; a kinetic, reassuring presence. […] Pierrette’s misfortunes are not framed as pitiable [so much as] they are indictments of neocolonialism in Cameroon, those residual creases in the country’s socioeconomic fabric. ‘I didn’t want to tell the story of Pierrette the way the West would, I wanted to tell it the way we live it,’ Mbakam told Film Comment. It takes a certain amount of reverence to relay your country to an international audience cavities and all, though Mbakam has always understood the whorling nature of homesickness.” –Saffron Maeve, SCREEN SLATE

“Mbakam’s heroines are not victims, they are lucid and assertive, able to read their environments and endear their audiences with ease. Yet, in this film, Mambar’s spotlight is stolen towards the end by the appearance of a clown whose brief, moving monologue touches on subversive gender expression, popular justice, and the state of performing arts in Cameroon – ‘Art is dead in this country’, he laments, a cutting declaration and one that the film is actively resisting.” –Abiba Coulibaly, ULTRA DOGME

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MAMBAR PIERRETTE

Wednesday, January 31

MAMBAR PIERRETTE

Thursday, February 01

PALESTINIAN VOICES: A WORLD NOT OURS

Thursday, February 01

(ALAM LAYSA LANA)

Before his family settled in Denmark, filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh, in Lebanon. Hastily built in 1948 and, at the time of filming, housing 70,000 refugees in one square kilometer, Ain el-Helweh is an unlikely source of nostalgia and yearning, but for Fleifel it represents the closest thing to a home, a precious concept given his family’s history and eventual settlement in Europe. Through the years Fleifel returned regularly to visit friends and family, always with camera in tow, and in A WORLD NOT OURS he shapes his extensive video diaries into an affectionate, witty, yet ultimately shattering portrait of this community. Gradually focusing on the experiences of Fleifel’s friend Abu Eyad, whose natural intelligence makes him an especially articulate and sensitive witness to the tragically circumscribed lives of Ain el-Helweh’s residents, A WORLD NOT OURS conveys the Palestinian experience with an insight that very few films have equaled.

Followed by:
Mahdi Fleifel XENOS 2014, 13 min, digital. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“On a modern odyssey Palestinians are stranded in Athens. Their wandering has led them from a refugee camp in Lebanon, through Syria and Turkey to the Greece of the Euro crisis – a haven that turns out not to be substantially calmer than the sea.” –VIDEONALE

Mahdi Fleifel 20 HANDSHAKES 4 PEACE 2014, 5 min, digital
“September 13, 1993: Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Bill Clinton’s handshake on the lawn of the White House after signing the Oslo Accords. A historic moment, repeated 20 times. Tainted by countless shattered hopes and with a voice-over by intellectual Edward Said, expressing his outrage at the agreement.” –ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Total running time: ca. 115 min.

“Palestinian Voices” is co-presented by ArteEast. ArteEast is a New York based non-profit organization advocating for and supporting artists from the South West Asia North Africa (SWANA) region and its diaspora, engaging with U.S. and international audiences and arts communities. For more information, visit ArteEast's website.

Special thanks to Mahdi Fleifel and to Ginou Choueiri (ArteEast).

[Please note: our printed calendar mistakenly indicated the screening date as TUES, Feb 1 - the screening is in fact scheduled for THURS, Feb 1.]

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MAMBAR PIERRETTE

Thursday, February 01

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Friday, February 02

REVIVAL RUN!

Digitally restored in 4K from original 16mm elements in 2022 by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding was provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. A Janus Films release.

Anthology presents a week-long revival run of Martha Coolidge’s emotionally shattering and formally innovative NOT A PRETTY PICTURE (1975). A self-reflexive documentary that was the culmination of the early non-fiction films Coolidge made before turning towards narrative fiction with VALLEY GIRL (1983), NOT A PRETTY PICTURE has been newly restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation.

“Driven to restage her experience of rape at sixteen, Martha Coolidge’s feature-length directorial debut is a multifaceted documentary about an intensely personal experience. The actors she cast, all deliberately chosen, make for a rag-tag ensemble. The female lead who plays the director’s young self was also a rape victim, and one of the schoolgirls was Coolidge’s real roommate, and is thus older by a decade than the rest of the crew. As amateur as the film may appear on the surface, NOT A PRETTY PICTURE is both a compelling exercise in catharsis and an attempt at a larger critique of silence around rape. In viewing the film, a rare kind of alienation emerges – one that is both troubling and captivating.” –Bora Kim

“The film’s anguished restaging of sexual violence suggests an absolute limit of experience that defies expression. In the documentary framework, both women confront the mores of a time that openly shamed and blamed victims. Several scenes evoke the Hollywood movies of Coolidge’s youth – teen comedies, melodramas, horror films, even musicals – as if suggesting the media’s distortions and falsifications of women’s lives, to which her film offers a crucial corrective.” –Richard Brody, THE NEW YORKER

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SHE IS CONANN

Friday, February 02

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

Distributed by Altered Innocence.

Guardian of the underworld, Cerberus still has a muzzle but here he is called Rainer and has the breasts and the voice of a woman, wears a studded black leather jacket, and a flash camera fit for the paparazzi. Talking to us from the great beyond, he details the successive reincarnations of Conann the Barbarian, a bloodthirsty Amazon from ancient times. A visceral and impulsive queer illusionist, Bertrand Mandico (a prolific maker of highly inventive short films since the late 1990s, whose first feature, THE WILD BOYS, had its NYC premiere run at Anthology in 2018) casts his magic lantern on an imaginary pre-history, as well as some new little shops of horrors, rendered simultaneously in color and black-and-white.

Both Mandico and his star Elina Löwensohn will be here in person during opening weekend!

“In Mandico’s hot queer extravaganza, the divine Elina Löwensohn stars as the dog-headed demon Rainer, who narrates from the Underworld a dark tale of the heroine Conann and her six transformations across human epochs. From Conann’s early childhood as a barbarian slave to the neon-tinged 1980s, where the monstrous boomboxes clank alongside the shining swords. Delight your senses with a surreal fantasy that takes pride in cannibalism, torture, perverse sex, blood and guts and lots and lots (lots) of glitter!” –KINO SVETOZOR

“‘You’re not from here, are you?’ It is a question posed in Bertrand Mandico’s latest surreal spectacle, but it could also be a challenge applied to anyone who dares enter his demented world of cannibalism, kinky sex, torture and relentless bloodletting. CONANN reworks the mythic barbarian tale, turning it into a saga of a female warrior that spans decades and features different actors playing the titular role.” –Tim Grierson, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL

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NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Friday, February 02

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Saturday, February 03

THE SHOW HAS ALREADY STARTED

Saturday, February 03

(L’ÉMISSION A DÉJÀ COMMENCÉ)

This compilation brings together the two short films that, along with SHE IS CONANN, comprise the “Barbarian cycle”: WE BARBARIANS (2023) and RAINER, A VICIOUS DOG IN A SKULL VALLEY (2023). Woven together with newly-shot interludes and an additional short film, THE LAST CARTOON – NONSENSE, OPTIMISTIC, PESSIMISTIC (2023), the complete work makes its U.S. debut here at Anthology!

“These works, though filmed on the same sets and featuring the same cast as CONANN, operate as meta-cinematic companion pieces. They offer a nuanced commentary on the film industry and the contemporary state of cinema.” –Martin Kudlac, SCREEN ANARCHY

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NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Saturday, February 03

SHE IS CONANN

Saturday, February 03

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Saturday, February 03

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Sunday, February 04

THE SHOW HAS ALREADY STARTED

Sunday, February 04

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Sunday, February 04

SHE IS CONANN

Sunday, February 04

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Sunday, February 04

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Monday, February 05

SHE IS CONANN

Monday, February 05

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Monday, February 05

SHE IS CONANN

Monday, February 05

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Tuesday, February 06

SHE IS CONANN

Tuesday, February 06

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Tuesday, February 06

SHE IS CONANN

Tuesday, February 06

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Wednesday, February 07

SHE IS CONANN

Wednesday, February 07

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Wednesday, February 07

SHE IS CONANN

Wednesday, February 07

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Thursday, February 08

SHE IS CONANN

Thursday, February 08

NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

Thursday, February 08

SHE IS CONANN

Thursday, February 08

BRIGHTON BEACH

Friday, February 09

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKERS IN PERSON!

New 4K restoration courtesy of IndieCollect; restoration funded by the HFPA Trust and IndieCollect donors to the Jane Fonda Fund for Women Directors.

At once a charming portrait of the diverse residents of a unique New York City neighborhood, a vibrant time capsule of the city at the very beginning of the 1980s, and a penetrating exploration of the social and political dynamics of a rapidly changing community, BRIGHTON BEACH is a long-lost gem of documentary cinema that has been newly restored by IndieCollect. Directed with great empathy and perceptiveness by Carol Stein & Susan Wittenberg, BRIGHTON BEACH captures the Brooklyn neighborhood known as the poor man’s paradise – a city by the sea down the street from the Coney Island boardwalk. Interspersing interviews with the neighborhood’s residents – including the Soviet Jews who had begun arriving in large numbers at the time – with archival footage of the area fifty years earlier, the film is both a portrait of a very particular time and place as well as a study of the ways in which urban communities function, cohere, and continuously transform themselves.

“BRIGHTON BEACH is a film about survival, uprootedness, immigration, racism…marriage…how the poor find pleasure, how the old stay young, how people in crowded places share space, how the melting pot won’t melt. It is a film about a corner of gentleness and relief in a tough town.” –Carol Stein & Susan Wittenberg

“The filmmakers interviewed locals of various ethnic persuasions (with a particular focus on the recent influx of Soviet Jews), interspersing everything with stock footage of Coney Island in the ’30s and moody shots of the boardwalk at dawn. A cameo by the Barry Sisters makes the film a must for connoisseurs of Yiddish kitsch.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Directors Carol Stein & Susan Wittenberg will be here in person for selected screenings!

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ANITA

Friday, February 09

Centered on the titular Anita – a young peasant girl working as a maid – Rassoul Labuchin’s film denounces the practices of child domestic labor. Made by one of Haitian cinema’s key figures, the story also doubles as a metaphor for the dependency and servitude imposed by U.S. imperialism. In clear defiance of one of the most repressive years of the Duvalier political regime, ANITA was immediately censored and removed from distribution. Undeterred, Labuchin and his team toured the film through provincial cities and the countryside, in a mobile effort of political education and community building. It was hugely popular with Haitian audiences and media as a poetic portrayal which felt true to the socio-economic and political realities of the island – and also widely celebrated when it was released internationally. ANITA brought an importantly gendered perspective to the documentation of the Duvalier years, while also honoring the friendship between the protagonist and another girl, Choupette, in a tribute to the forms of rebellion which might sometimes seem too minor to be registered. It was also the first Haitian film to be shot in Kreyòl.

“ANITA turned out to be a turning point in the history of Haitian cinema, breaking from the stifling commercial network to build a real audience among the masses in the streets and alleys, from the outskirts to the small rural Catholic or protestant churches, and interacting with the emerging labor movements, cooperatives, and community, neighborhood, and youth organizations.” –Michaëlle Lafontant-Médard

Following the screening on Feb 9, series curator Yasmina Price will be joined in conversation by Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, who was present for and contributed to the early history of Haitian Cinema. She is the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, amongst many others, as well as editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, and more. Danticat has won numerous literary awards and fellowships including the MacArthur and Ford Foundation "Art of Change."

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Friday, February 09

HAITIAN CORNER

Friday, February 09

Raoul Peck is the most widely-known Haitian filmmaker, and his debut feature HAITIAN CORNER anchored a cinematic trajectory with political purpose. The film is a collective portrait of Haitian identity in exile while being centered on the story of Joseph Bossuet. A poet and factory worker who moves to New York, he often visits the “Haitian Corner” bookstore, a space frequented by many fellow exiles from the Duvalier regime, whose daily lives are the rhythm of Peck’s film. Before escaping, Joseph had been imprisoned and tortured for seven years by the dictator’s brutal paramilitary secret police, the Tonton Macoute. When he spots one of his torturers one day in New York, Joseph is plunged back into traumas that are both individual and shared, as the film touches on vengeance, state terror, and class struggle. HAITIAN CORNER serves as an exploration of how the past always disrupts and coexists with the present, of what people hold onto and leave behind, and of the central importance of memory. The film was very popular in Haiti and received international acclaim.

“[Peck is] the best Haitian filmmaker for his film HAITIAN CORNER which made me relive my season in hell and which brought me to believe that the future will be enchanting.” –Rassoul Labuchin

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Saturday, February 10

HAITI: THE WAY TO FREEDOM

Saturday, February 10

(AYITI MEN CHIMIN LIBETE / HAÏTI LE CHEMIN DE LA LIBERTÉ)

Committed to making political films about Haiti’s history and dedicated to the collective memory of his fellow Haitians, Arnold Antonin is one of the pillars of Haitian Cinema. He entered filmmaking through anti-dictatorship militancy, and his monumental debut feature, AYITI MEN CHIMIN LIBETE, retraces the struggle of Haitian people for their sovereignty. It chronicles Taïno resistance to the Spanish conquest, transatlantic slavery, the rebellion of 1791 and founding of the first Black Republic, the return to the plantation economy and eventual peasant revolts, the American occupation and the beginning of the Duvaliers’ rule. Celebrated as the first Haitian feature film, it comprises a collage of footage of daily life, visual and textual archival materials, photographs, drawings to fill in the gaps, and interviews with militants and organizers such as Rodophe Moïse, Ulrick Jolly, and Justin Castera. AYITI MEN CHIMIN LIBETE was an openly anti-Duvalierist denunciation that functioned as both a history lesson and a call to arms for the Haitian people. Initially made with a Kreyòl voiceover to be accessible to the Haitian masses, it was quickly translated into French, Spanish, English, Italian, and German to circulate widely as internationalist propaganda aimed at militants, students, and workers. The closing title card, with a wink to Marx’s Thesis Eleven, says it all:

“This film may be used in the anti-Duvalier struggle by anyone, with due credit to the makers. This film sets out to expose to Haitians what happens and what has happened in their country, in order to change things. This is an appeal to all that they unite to crush the criminal and depraved Duvalier dynasty. Finally, it tries to inform other peoples about the continued struggle of the Haitian people against local and foreign exploitation.”

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Saturday, February 10

BRIGHTON BEACH

Saturday, February 10

MOLOCH TROPICAL

Saturday, February 10

“Inspired by the kingdom of 19th-century king Henri-Christophe, one of the revolutionary leaders who won for Haiti its independence from French colonial rule, but set in a modern milieu, MOLOCH TROPICAL presents a fictionalized portrait of the final days marking the collapse of a regime. The hot air is thick with a tightly coiled tension at President Jean de Dieu’s palatial fortress outside Port-au-Prince. His security force rattles with civil unrest and international diplomats one by one turn their backs on the president’s summit invitation. Hobbling around his quarters, de Dieu erratically exerts scraps of control as his authority rapidly disintegrates into humiliation. Using symbolism and an almost Shakespearean madness that reverberates across modern governments, Peck meticulously drapes the poetic across the political in a searing critique on the universal malady of absolute power corrupting absolutely.” –TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

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ARNOLD ANTONIN PROGRAM

Sunday, February 11

NAIVE ART AND REPRESSION IN HAITI / ART NAÏF ET RÉPRESSION EN HAÏTI
1976, 45 min, 16mm-to-digital. In French and Haitian Creole with English subtitles.
Antonin’s fourth documentary historicizes and condemns the triple exploitation – commercial, political, and ideological – of what is known as “l’art naif” or “naïve art.” The style was identified and coveted by the American art market (with C.I.A. approval) to support a primitivized image of Haiti and Haitians. In addition to feeding a lucrative and exploitative artistic commerce at the mercy of American interests, “l’art naïf” was also weaponized by the Duvalier dictatorship for its own ends. NAIVE ART AND REPRESSION IN HAITI includes numerous interviews with artists. A comment by one of them is a chilling testimony: “I can’t make anything I want to. I’m a slave to an American capitalist who wants to satisfy his escape fantasies. If I made another type of painting, I wouldn’t be able to sell it.” Antonin’s documentary functions to both expose the collusions of art and power, while ultimately calling for a renewed and autonomous Haitian artistic and cultural production.

Arnold AntoninRADIO HAÏTI-INTER: LE DROIT À LA PAROLE1981, 14 min, 16mm-to-digital. In French and Haitian Creole with English subtitles.
This film is a tribute to the collective struggle of journalists and writers against the censorship of the Duvalier regime. Made while many of them had to leave the island and Antonin himself was in exile in Venezuela, RADIO HAÏTI-INTER recreates one of their typical independent radio broadcasts at a time when these were banned. The mixture of fact and fiction makes this something of a “docu-fiction”, with appearances by Lilianne Pierre-Paul, Compère Philo, Harold Isaac, Jackson Pierre-Paul, Vivianne Nicolas, Henry Alphonse, and Raymond Davius. Even at the heights of repression, this speculative experiment created an imaginary opening for subversive voices which the government never succeeded in fully silencing.

Total running time: ca. 65 min.

For more info about Arnold Antonin, visit www.arnoldantoninfilms.com and www.youtube.com/@arnoldantoninhaitifilms2554

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Sunday, February 11

KRIK? KRAK! TALES OF A NIGHTMARE

Sunday, February 11

Although both are named after a Haitian form of oral call-and-response storytelling, KRIK? KRAK! TALES OF A NIGHTMARE is in some ways the opposite of “Krik? Krak!” (1995), Haitian-American writer Edwidge Dandicat’s short story cycle which chronicles women’s experiences of belonging, immigration, and identity at the level of the everyday. Evident in the title, the documentary is instead frankly sensationalizing – bringing together newsreel footage, interviews, and fictional segments in a feverish and surrealist twist on the documentary genre. Capturing the terror and misery of the Duvalier period, it does however make critical connections between the dictatorship and American imperialism.

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Sunday, February 11

HAITI: SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Sunday, February 11

Rudy Burckhardt HAITI 1938, 15 min, 16mm
The production of this travelogue by Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt must be contextualized by the 1915-34 U.S. invasion and occupation of Haiti. Yet this record of Port-au-Prince also deserves attention because it formally avoids the racist, exoticizing, and stereotypical depictions that were the cultural arm of American imperialism. Instead, it offers an enduringly moving glimpse into the mundane rhythms of everyday life, focused on bustling markets, street scenes, the inside and outside of homes, trees, and landscapes.

Humberto Solás SIMPARELE 1974, 30 min, 35mm-to-digital. In Spanish with English subtitles.
The Cuban director best known for the revolutionary epic LUCÍA (1968) shot another sort of historical film on people’s resistance taking place on the neighboring island of Haiti, made in collaboration with Haitian artists. SIMPARELE was made a few years into the beginning of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s rule and doubled as a condemnation of the dictatorial dynasty.

“SIMPARELE is history interpreted through people’s art. The film synthesizes the primary forms through which the Haitian people have expressed themselves in the centuries since the island’s colonization by the French and the massive importation of African slaves to fuel its plantation economy. It is a composite of dance, theatrical tableaux, poetry, song, folk painting, legend and religious ritual. SIMPARELE acknowledges the powerful role which Afro-Haitian culture has played in these people’s political struggle as both repository for people’s history and the raw material from which that history can be reconstructed and transformed.” –Louise Diamond & Lyn Parker

Moira Tierney RADIO HAÏTI 2001, 4 min, 16mmNew York’s Haitian community takes it to the bridge to protest a year of mortal policing, Easter 2000.

Sarah Maldoror REGARDS DE MÉMOIRE 2003, 24 min, digital. In French with English subtitles.
Sarah Maldoror’s lyrical and militant contributions to Pan-African Cinema focused on global revolution, the many roles of women, Black culture, and the everyday. Filmed in Martinique, Haiti, and France, REGARDS DE MÉMOIRE centers on the writer Édouard Glissant and his fellow Martinican, the poet and political figure Aimé Césaire. Tracing shared histories of colonization and transatlantic slavery from Senegal to the Caribbean, the documentary evokes the memories of the Haitian Revolution and legacy of Toussaint Louverture.

Carlos Adriano BRAZIL IS THEE HAITI IS (T)HERE / O QUE HÁ EM TI 2020, 16 min, digital. In English, French, Haitian, and Portuguese with English subtitles.
“On March 16, 2020, in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, an anonymous and unknown Haitian man challenged the chief of the nation: ‘Bolsonaro, it’s over. You are not the President anymore.’ This film-poem is a counterpoint between this act of protest, and the catastrophic military operations held by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, commanded by Brazil.” –SHEFFIELD DOC FEST

“[The film] deserves an obvious word: masterpiece. It comes directly from your rage, indignation, revolt – thanks to all your deep knowledge about images and how to work with them. It’s what we call in France: ‘un classique instantané’, a human work which encapsulates its time with genius and deserves to be transmitted to all the generations while the humanity still exists.” –Nicole Brenez

Total running time: ca. 95 min.

The Revered Dr. Herbert Daughtry, who appears in RADIO HAÏTI, will introduce the program on Sun, Feb 11. Daughtry is a civil rights activist in Brooklyn, an author, and national presiding minister of the House of the Lord Church. He founded the African People's Christian organization in 1982, was a special assistant to Reverend Jesse Jackson during his presidential campaign, and participated in NYC Mayor David Dinkins' delegation to South Africa.

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Sunday, February 11

BRIGHTON BEACH

Monday, February 12

EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY

Monday, February 12

(MANGE, CECI EST MON CORPS)

A deserted colonial mansion in Haiti is populated with three almost anonymous characters. With a minimal narrative and highly stylized look, this first-feature by Haitian-American Michelange Quay is an allegorical diagnosis of power told in silences and gestures. EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY unfolds as an enigmatic and surreal staging of the racial and sexual politics inherited by colonization and enslavement. As is named in the title, food and more broadly consumption, are central vehicles for the film’s tableaus and bridging of Haiti’s past and present. Thickly visual and shot in captivating 35mm, EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY maintains an ambivalent tension between its dreamy, feverish aestheticization and irredeemable structures of violence.

Preceded by:
Michelange Quay
THE GOSPEL OF THE CREOLE PIG / L’EVANGILE DU COCHON CREOLE
2004, 19 min, 35mm-to-digital. In French and Haitian Creole with English subtitles.
Quay’s short film is an impressively condensed treatment of Haitian history through the “Creole Pig.” The animal serves as a metaphor and a symbol, calling up Voudon practices, national identity, and exploitative dynamics. With an elliptical, meditative approach, the film also functions to expose class antagonisms and the ongoing predatory actions of the U.S. in Haiti.

Total running time: ca. 130 min.

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Monday, February 12

THIS HOUSE

Tuesday, February 13

(CETTE MAISON)

A haunting and tender meditation on displacement, grief, and memory. Haitian-Canadian filmmaker Miryam Charles’s debut feature is dedicated to her 14-year-old cousin Tessa, whose tragic death in 2008 was the origin point for the filmmaker’s contemplation of their family’s history of migration and relationship to Haiti. Shot in lustrous 16mm, Charles renders traumatic histories with a loving touch, recalling classics of Black women’s diasporic cinema such Martina Attile’s DREAMING RIVERS (1988) and Julie Dash’s DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991). THIS HOUSE moves between sensitively artificial interiors and vibrantly realistic landscapes, offering a cinematic wake for the irrecuperable loss of a beloved young girl – and the solace of impossible elegy.

“In this ornate experimental documentary, Charles presents meticulously gathered Haitian soundscapes, an assortment of Caribbean flora, precious keepsakes, and staged recollections. With these elements, she conjures a reunion across realms, showing a family that is still standing despite being profoundly changed by what they have suffered.” –Nataleah Hunter-Young

Preceded by:
FLY, FLY SADNESS / VOLE, VOLE TRISTESSE 2015, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital
An anonymous narrator describes the aftermath of a mysterious explosion in Port-au-Prince that transforms the voices of all its individual inhabitants into one single voice.

A FORTRESS / UNE FORTERESSE 2018, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital
After the death of their adoptive daughter, a couple goes to Haiti looking for her relatives. There, they meet with a DNA specialist who might have the power of resurrection.

SECOND GENERATION 2019, 5 min, 16mm-to-digital
A few days before her wedding, a young woman learns that her fiancé is accused of sexual assault. She goes to Haiti to confront the alleged victim.

Total running time: ca. 95 min.

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BRIGHTON BEACH

Tuesday, February 13

BRIGHTON BEACH

Tuesday, February 13

AYITI MON AMOUR

Tuesday, February 13

“Set in Haiti five years after the devastating 2010 earthquake, Guetty Felin’s magical realist tale avoids the kinds of images of the disaster that saturated screens around the world. In his depiction of young Orphée’s grief over the loss of his father beneath the rubble of decimated buildings (represented in ghostly images that float beneath the ocean’s surface), Felin refuses to tell a story of victimhood. Instead, she gives the narrative back to the Haitian people, whose lives cannot be reduced to headlines. And as her characters begin to heal, Felin suggests that the island will too.” –AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL NEW YORK

“Felin taps into her past work in the documentary field, infusing the realities of modern-day Haiti with a lyrical touch. From its verité-style moments of Jaures the fisherman laboring by the beach to the theatrical scenes between muse Ama and her author, the film makes its fluid tonal shifts at a lulling, rhythmic pace.” –Cameron Bailey, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

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