Once the place to be for celebrity royalty like Elizabeth Taylor and Mick Jagger, the one-time paradise is now hell on earth for its inhabitants. Kim Sengupta explains how this beautiful island nation became a prime spot for kidnappings and gang violence
COMMENT: Once the place to be for celebrity royalty like Elizabeth Talor and Mick Jagger, the one-time paradise is now Hell on Earth for its inhabitants. Kim Sengupta explains what made this beautiful island nation decend into kidnappings and gang violence
Haiti. Uden title is a kaleidoscopic, dramatic documentary from this chaotic Caribbean country and comprises a mixture of material on video, 16 mm and 35 mm, dating in some scenes right back shooting on Leth's Udenrigskorrespondent (1982). The very lively hand-held video sequences that make up the most recent material make up the bulk of the film and the rapid, fragmentary editing style garnished with neat video tricks, gunfire, etc. put the film at the same level as the Haiti chaos itself. The French photographer Chantal Regnault plays Leth's role as the "experiencer", an observer in the midst of the dramatic reality of Haiti which she also describes with an outsider's fascination. The film contains a large number of very powerful, sensual pictures of life and death in Haiti, the heartrending weeping at the funerals, mountains of refuse picturesquely and infernally aflame, the dramatic manifestations and ritual beauty of voodoo, the rhetoric of the politicians