Jason says:
“Full disclosure: I missed the first few minutes of AYITI TOMA,
so I admittedly cannot give a full accounting of the film. That
happens when you try to squeeze as many movies that you will have
limited opportunities to see later into one’s personal schedule as
possible. And while principle often keeps me from writing up
something I haven’t seen in full, this is a movie worth recommending,
and Haiti gets ignored and poorly served enough without me contributing.
“‘Ayiti Toma’ means ‘country that is ours’ in Haitian Creole, and
director Joseph Hillel spends much of his time speaking to the
residents, perhaps most memorably a group of residents of Fort
National, an area of Port-au-Prince still devastated two years after
the earthquake that hit the island in 2010. The island is more
than Port-au-Prince and the disaster, though, and he spend time
exploring his parents’ homeland outside the city and going through the
island’s history, trying to examine what put it in such a bad situation
even before the quake.
“He takes an interesting tack in doing so, actually. Most
documentaries, our histories in any medium, will generally start from
the beginning and work forward, even if those chapters are intercut
with present-day scenes to demonstrate their relevance; Hillel
basically starts at the present and works his way back. So while
the first half-hour is heavy on the topics that might inspire
present-day activism and certainly can be most easily advertised,
Hillel eventually places that on the back burner to dig up the roots of
the country’s current issues, all the way back to a revolution whose
success left the newborn republic in economic thrall to France and then
to how the colony was built on slavery, which is still reflected in the
culture. He’s then able to close the circle, in a way, by having
anthropologist Ira Lowenthal imagine an alternate history where Haiti
did not start out economically crippled and its revolution spread to
it’s neighbors. It’s a fascinating way to look at history, one
that emphasizes how self-serving decisions can cast long shadows.
“While making this circle, Hillel certainly manages to get some
memorable imagery and ideas into the audience’s heads. There are
the residents of Fort National, for instance, angry at how the relief
efforts have ignored them because everyone in the areas is assumed to
be bandits and slowly doing what they can to clear the rubble on their
own. There’s the ceremonial changing of the guard at a house of
government left asymmetrical because the roof of one wing has sheered
off, as iconic a symbol of a nation having trouble rebuilding itself
beyond the superficial and short-term as you’ll ever see. And
there’s a great bit linking the original zombie folklore and slavery
that really make me wish that the term hadn’t been appropriated to
describe flesh-eating ghouls. There are also a number of
interesting interviews, from local economist Camille Chalmers and
voudon Papa Danis to the likes of Lowenthal, who has lived there for
decades and argues passionately about the many raw deals his adopted
country has received, and actor Sean Penn, who has been hands-on with
relief efforts and is one of several to vacillate between decrying how
much donated money winds up returning to the United States (or other
first-world countries) and/or actually hurting the Haitian economy in
the long term and how people need food now.
“Ultimately, that sentiment seems to describe much of Haiti’s history
as much as its present: A unique culture founded on great ideals
that just never got the chance to build for the future that it
deserves. There’s always hope, and Hillel always depicts a
resilient people, but it’s going to be an uphill battle. 3.8 cats
“Seen 27 April 2014 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival
Boston, digital)” |
