Memberships
April 23, 2016 at 4:00 PM PT
Alamo Drafthouse
Sold Out
Calendar SFFILM Festival

Ayiti Mon Amour

Directed by Guetty Felin  |  Haiti/USA  |  88 min

A chorale for several voices in the wake of the Haiti earthquake, this poetic and visually stunning work tracks several characters, including a teenager studying Japanese who is bullied for being light-skinned and a writer and his muse who are grappling with their identities. As the restless camera finds beauty amid the quotidian and radio broadcasts grapple with rebuilding, the film dedicates itself to the restless and resilient souls who populate this culturally rich island nation.
More Details

Description

Haitian-born filmmaker Guetty Felin invokes the country’s past and present with a chorale for several voices of residents attempting to love, prosper and survive in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Jaurès, an old fisherman who talks to his cow, struggles to look after his beloved ailing wife, Odessa. Teenage Orphée, whose father perished in the earthquake, goes swimming in the sea and emerges with his body holding an electrical current, transforming him into a human charging station. Rags, the empty clothing of temblor victims, cover rocks on the shore. But seen underwater, the tattered garments appear as living, disembodied humans, animated by the spirits of the dead. And in town, demonstrators denounce government corruption, and the fishermen complain angrily about their livelihood being destroyed. Ayiti Mon Amour captures the hopes and fears of the Haitian people at a critical moment in their history. —Miguel Pendás

Trailer

//player.vimeo.com/video/158394247?autoplay=1

Biographies

Director Guetty Felin

Guetty Felin was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in New York. She earned an MFA in cinema from the University of Paris. Her work includes Closer to the Dream (2010), a grass-roots account of Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign, and Broken Stones (2012), a documentary about the devastation of the 2010 earthquake in the old part of Port-au-Prince. “Ayiti Mon Amour,” she says, “is a love poem to my native land, a place that I ache for, that haunts me, that frightens and yet angers me, a place that I am fiercely and madly in love with.”