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Collaborative Film Making

Magazine

05 September 2022
This month's topic: Collaborative Film MakingResident Editor: Lorenzo Sandoval

Collaborative Film Making

"Ouvertures" by

The Haitian revolution was a test case for the ideals of the French Revolution: What does the promise that all men are brothers who enjoy the same inviolable rights even mean as long as colonies and slavery exist? Nothing, according to the enslaved inhabitants of Haiti, who rebelled against the owners of the sugar cane plantations in 1791. In 1961, Antillean writer Édouard Glissant dedicated his play Monsieur Toussaint to their leader Toussaint Louverture, which in turn serves as the basis for Ouvertures. Louis Henderson, Olivier Marboeuf and the theatre group The Living and The Dead Ensemble film themselves rehearsing the play in Port-au-Prince. The result is an experiment in three parts: a study retracing Louverture’s steps, an analysis of shared authorship and collective filmmaking and finally the outburst of a magical reality in which the spirits of the dead are alive.

This film is part of the “Collaborative Film Making” month. Each screening will be open for one week.

www.vimeo.com/phantomdiffusion/ouvertures

The Living and the Dead Ensemble is a group of artists, performers and poets from Haiti, France and the United Kingdom. They initially came together in Haiti 2017, to produce their Haitian Creole translation and performance of the play “Monsieur Toussaint” by Édouard Glissant. Initiated from an original idea by Louis Henderson, the Ensemble’s first film “OUVERTURES” premiered in the Forum section of Berlinale in 2020, where it was awarded a FIPRESCI special mention. Their work explores different possible methods of telling the history and the present from a Caribbean perspective. The Ensemble produces texts, performances, films and installations. The Ensemble are: Mackenson Bijou, Rossi Jacques Casimir, Dieuvela Cherestal, James Desiris, Louis Henderson, Léonard Jean Baptiste, Cynthia Maignan, Sophonie Maignan, Olivier Marboeuf, Mimétik Nèg.

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