RE: Pluie d'espoir DVD bootleg the true Pirates Mr. D Your...

RE: Pluie d'espoir DVD bootleg the true Pirates

Mr. D
Your commentary albeit concise, as required in this forum, is both poignant and revealing.

Clearly Pluie D'Espoir is an evocative movie that invites social and political discourse.

The Haitian society's many problems are deeply rooted in its glorious and in many ways tragic history.

The movie and its many interwoven layers masquerade thought provoking complex issues as a form of rational discourse.

The producers of PD did not overlook that aspect of personal responsibility necessary to function productively in a society.

They have identified the burgeoning Haitian film industry as an important medium for democratic expression in the form of moral outrage.

This moral outrage has quickly translated to civic life: hence your commentary.

I will be the first to admit that I like the movie and have seen it at least 7 times and they are right in saying that it is a movie that you must see over and over again.

That said, I am not suggesting in any way that the public purchase the pirated copy...I am however stating bluntly that it is a movie worth seeing.

Mr. D, your comments raised issues of Euro centrism and certainly, that is not something anyone can casually dismiss (...you are wily Mr D for I see a book in the offing or at the very least a position paper).

Haitians will state candidly that the problem of language (Creole v. French) is emblematic of the confusion at the heart of this lost tribe in search of identity.

That is why when those uncomfortable issues of class surface the wobble in our nature shakes our foundation.

Consequently we conform to certain accepted social customs such as imitating the French, quoting the globetrotting Argentine, channeling the Hippie Movement while hoping Wyclef does not embarrass by being too Haitian.

These routinely self-inflicted wounds in the form of cultural stereotypes are the result of well hidden and seldom confronted racial, cultural and social biases.

To be fair, at the same time this conformance is a pragmatic choice we make at the cost of our self-worth.

The sins of the past weigh heavily on all Haitians: some more than others.

Helas!
As a nation, we would benefit from psycho-analysis.

I am sure the strange behavior does not escape you, for when our despots flee to Paris, they encounter on the Champs Elysee shortly after landing there, the very countrymen they exiled while in power, asking directions to "Les Invalides" (here is a symbolism for you that doesn't involve missing scenes), to pay homage to Napoleon - not Toussaint mind you (all saintly) - but Bonaparte (good part).

Yes, Sigmund Freud if he was alive would want this case.

Anyway, back to the movie...the producers and writers both did a wonderful job in raising these issues (race, class, morality) and a courageous and commendable one at that, in exposing themselves.

I feel that books will be written about this movie and I am sure their personal and public records will also be examined and scrutinized; the good, the bad and the ugly. I know that is cliché but bear with me for my advancing years should certainly afford me such liberties.

I assure you it is not plagiarism - but it probably is that wobble once again.

Be a little more understanding for it is this very record of their lives which spawned this wonderful movie by "Renaissance Films" - another symbolism?

Let us support their present and future efforts...not naively but vigilantly.

I recently read something I wrote somewhere, to the effect that the truth is like a virus and art is its host. Truth will surface irrespective of intentions or attempts to conceal it. Therein lay the power of art and the dilemma of the Haitian artist as he grapples with false consciousness.

Oh! the storyline was not well served by the music which seemed to bolster that superficial cultural phenomenon of wanting to be a composer that looks for some ethereal explanation to society's problems: a type of mysticism which this time is not the wobble but our firm foundation: our Roc.

Alphonse H.

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