A Film on the Haitian Revolution
Comments on April 9th by Actor/Activist and TransAfrica Forum Board Chair Danny
Glover During Press Conference with Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on the
Occasion of the 200th Anniversary of the Death of Toussaint L'Ouverture on April 7,
2003
I've talked about working on a film on the Haitian revolution for the last
20 years. That is a project which has taken many roads. It has been a
very arduous journey. The story is, as the esteemed scholars would say,
so large that it's almost unimaginable. We've all learned about the
American Revolution, we all learned about the French Revolution, but so
few people know of, or are aware of, the Haitian Revolution. So the
attempt to use a film as the medium of education must have an enormous
support system to reeducate people who've been miseducated. So a film
is only a very small part of the process. The work that we have to do
before, beyond the film and after the film. The work we have to do in
creating the kind of teacher, the educational materials, is daunting. We
have to break through this wall, this veil, this presumptuous attitude that
people have about people of color, and specifically of people of Haitian
descent.
So the process of writing a script has been going on my part for the last
two years and the process of acquiring a director simultaneously has
gone on for the last two years. But the ways in which we can introduce
the idea of freedom, the ideas of nationhood, the reeducation of a world
population, in particularly a population in this hemisphere, begin and has
to begin right now.
One of the fascinating things that I've learned in reading and reading
various parts of history in the United States, reading commentary over
the period of the twentieth century, is that more people knew about
Toussaint L'Ouverture, more people knew about the Haitian Revolution,
or Henri Christophe, 100 years ago, or 50 years, or 75 years ago, than
know about it now. In fact, there had been schools named after those
aforementioned gentlemen. There have been schools in the United States
named in their honor, at various points in time, so people had a sense of
a history and people can have a dialogue about that. They were a part of
our popular culture, those popular cultures at the time, which included
reading.
Jean-Jean Pierre is working on a project right now that's going to be
presented at Carnegie Hall on the 23rd of May and that project is going
to be a multimedia event. It's going to include dance, it's going to include
poetry, it's going to include a script about Toussaint L'Ouverture, that
will be a one-night event and that will be at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Let me say something about this because I think there can be a great
deal of emphasis placed on a film, and certainly expectations. I come
here and I make a proposal, a promise that I would do everything
possible I can to realize something that's been a dream of mine. The first
thing that has to happen is there has to be a congruency of events that
come together. We all know that. We have to create an audience that
wants to understand and know about this information. So at this historic
moment, whether I do it, or if someone else does it, all I am saying is that
it needs to be done.
In that sense there may be many attempts at doing this but when it gets
done we would of achieved something enormous, and believe me, it is an
enormous task. Making this film in itself takes enormous resources, and
passion, and passion. What leads us here, more than anything else, is our
collective passion. It may be my individual passion to do a film about
Toussaint, but it is our collective passion which is going to get this done.
But what an incredible opportunity we have at this particular point in time
to celebrate this event. For all nations who are struggling, for all countries
who are struggling to develop. The oldest black republic in the world,
President Aristide reminded me that we would also be celebrating in
2004 the 10th anniversary of the newest black republic, South Africa, at
the same time. So we celebrate, we have this incredible aptitude when
people of the world need this right now. People of the world need to be
reminded, desperately need to be reminded, as we move into this
uncharted water, this uncharted area of the 21st century.
Let us say that perhaps 100 years from today our great grandchildren,
our grandchildren, will know that we did the right thing and will know
that we did something that they could build on and feed off of.
I discussed the embargo with the President and we both felt that what
was important for us to do is to use this moment also to highlight the
injustice of the embargo. We also felt that what was necessary, that we
need to build a critical consensus within the United States, among all
people, but particularly people of African descent to lift the embargo,
that we were in a critical position, an important position, in the United
States to do whatever work we could do to elevate that issue, to take
that issue and make it a part of the political discourse within the United
States to end it.
When Randall Robinson, the former President of TransAfrica, went on a
hunger strike in order to highlight the plight of Haitians and to bring
democracy back to Haiti, it had a very dramatic effect on the American
people and it had a very dramatic effect on the political dialogue. We
need to elevate and raise the issue to that level in order for the present
administration to respond and we need to, as we've done in other
events, at other critical moments, to bring the attention right to the
American people and personalize the struggle. We're in the process of
now, as the Chairman of TransAfrica Forum, and other groups have
been mobilizing to wage the battle necessary.
I would hope that its [the film] a dramatic success. I can't guarantee it. I'll
make every effort to bring something very special to that moment. I can
guarantee that it will be a good story, I can guarantee that it will be a
dramatic story. We have the elements there and I can guarantee that in
some ways that it will be successful in that way.
Do you think that Hollywood is ready for that film?
I don't know. I'm sure that people are ready to see such a film. It often
takes something, as I said earlier, whether we want to call it destiny, this
moment, whether we want to say a moment in a 100 years overdue,
however we want to frame this, the fact that we have the responsibility
and the opportunity to demand something more. Something more in
terms of what we see in films, something more in terms of what could
bring some abiding sense of identity, something that's going to happen in
this process. We cannot continue as we continue to go on. We have to
begin to look at who we are to understand who we are in relationship to
our past and to celebrate our past as a way, as a gateway, to our future.
I think the story of the Haitian Revolution, and I'll say this many, many
times, and hopefully I'll be able to say that we've accomplished that
when we make this film, that it's the story of the Haitian Revolution that is
the very vehicle that could possibly unlock something about filmmaking,
that not only entertains us, but fuels us in such a way that we're capable
of using that information to act, for action, for the purpose of actions.
Source: Michelle Karshan, Foreign Press Liaison, National Palace,
Haiti.
Actor/Activist Danny Glover
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