A Quote by Raoul Peck
Even in Haiti, I saw John Wayne movies. American cinema has always been the dominant cinema throughout the world, and people tend to forget that. People aren't just seeing these films in California or Florida. They're seeing them in Haiti, in Congo, in France, in Italy and in Asia. That is the power of Hollywood.
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There is this split between the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So when I'm writing anything set in Haiti now, whether fiction or nonfiction, always in the back of my mind is how people, including some of my own family members, have been affected not just by history and by the present but also by the earthquake.
But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.
American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.
The people in the United States are some of the most generous people in the world. We saw it in Haiti. We saw it with Katrina. When devastation strikes, American people want to step up.
Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere. The earthquake and the hurricanes, it has devastated Haiti. Bill Clinton and I have been involved in trying to help Haiti for many years.
A "name" no longer carries a film. People used to go to the cinema to see a "John Wayne film." And you don't have that thing happening now except in the rock world, which has taken the event out of movies.
It turns out that cholera is new to Haiti. It was inadvertently introduced by a group of U.N. peacekeepers stationed in central Haiti who had come from South Asia where it is endemic.
Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn't an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.
I loved movies as a teenager and saw as much American cinema as I could, but I hated the English films of the early '60s and had absolutely no point of identification with them.
I loved movies as a teenager and saw as much American cinema as I could, but I hated the English films of the early 60s and had absolutely no point of identification with them.
That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art; it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.
Hollywood is no longer the top. I love going to the cinema. I've always adored the idea of being in great, epic films. But they just don't really exist anymore. It's a real shame. There's great auteurs that create small movies, but it's really hard for anyone to see them, and for them to make any sort of money, or for them even to be made in the first place.
Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always. Always.
Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.
I was at a little Haiti the other day in Florida. And I want to tell you, they hate the Clintons, because what's happened in Haiti with the Clinton Foundation is a disgrace. And you know it, and they know it, and everybody knows it.
Cinema is a territory. It exists outside of movies. It's a place I live in. It's a way of seeing things, of experiencing life. But making films, that's supposed to be a profession.
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