International Research Film Festival

3rd Annual International Research Film Festival

CULTURE, DIASPORA AND CITIZENSHIP

DIASPORAS, CULTURE AND CITIZENSHIP is the theme of this third edition of the International Research Film Festival. The itinerant series is an initiative of the Slavery, Memory and Citizenship research network (The Harriet Tubman Institute/York University, CELAT/Université Laval, CIRESC/CNRS, LABHOI/Universidade Federal Fluminense). This year’s edition of the festival was launched on December 1, 2010 in Brazil and as in previous years the Toronto session is organized by the Harriet Tubman Institute at York University. The York University screening highlights recent research films about Haiti, in homage to the victims of the 2010 earthquake and in support of efforts at York University to assist in Haiti’s process of rebuilding.

10:00 Opening session: Paul Lovejoy (The Harriet Tubman Institute), Hebe Matos (LABHOI/Universidade Federal Fluminense), Francine Saillant (CELAT/Université Laval)

10:15 Brazilian research filmmaker Hebe Matos presents Verses and cudgels. Stick Playing in the Afro-Brazilian Culture of the Paraíba Valley

11:15 Break

11:30 Canadian research filmmaker Francine Saillant presents Vie et mort dans le candomblé

12:30 Lunch

1:30 Rigoberto López, Port-au-Prince ma ville

2:30 Round table on York’s engagement with Haiti

3:30 Arnold Antonin, Jacques Roumain: La passion d’un pays

4:30 Jacques Roumain: La passion d’un pays (continuation)

Film synopses:

ASSUNÇÃO Matthias Röhrig & MATTOS Hebe, Verses and cudgels. Stick Playing in the Afro-Brazilian Culture of the Paraíba Valley (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Petrobras, 2007, 37 minutes (Portuguese with English sub-titles and commentary).

The film Verses and Cudgels documents stick playing and its insertion into the Afro-Brazilian culture in the Paraìba valley. Its protagonists are the descendants of slaves who worked on the coffee plantations during the nineteenth century. The first part of the film recreates the atmosphere of the calango dances, where two or more singers improvise verses and challenge each other to the music of an accordion, a drum and tambourines. Tensions and rivalries that existed between plantations and villages also came to the fore during these dances, which often ended in brawls. At that moment the men confronted each other with cudgel blows or sweeping kicks. But sticks were also used on estates and in villages for a friendly entertainment called the «stick game», played on Sundays. The film seeks to give more visibility to this Afro-Brazilian combat tradition, which in many places only remains in the memory of old practitioners. The existence of the stick game, or its memory, provides some new tracks for the history of capoeira, the Brazilian martial art which is now practiced in many countries.

SAILLANT Francine, SIMONARD Pedro, D’OGUM Ialorixá Torody, Vie et mort dans le candomblé, 2010, (French with English sub-titles and commentary).

The film is the third part of a trilogy by the same filmmakers which began with Axé Dignité and Navio Negreiro. The third component, Vie et mort dans le candomblé, presents two rituals already seen in Axé Dignité but more developed here, the one dedicated to Xango and the funeral ritual of axéxé. Both rituals, of 20 minutes each in the documentary, are presented by the saint-mother of the terreiro Ilé Ayié Ala KoroWo, Ialorixá Torody D’ Ogum, from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), who accepted to be interviewed by the filmmaker and to present the broad story of candomblé in the context of the struggle against religious discrimination in Brazil and for the preservation of Afro-Brazilian culture. The film touches on the issue of ancestry, the history of black Brazilians, the place of candomblé in the preservation of memory, and today’s problems related to the right of freedom of religion. The film is an illustration of the struggle for the preservation of a memory and an identity which were constantly repressed since the coming of the slaves to Brazil, despite their importance as references for Brazilian culture in general.

LÓPEZ Rigoberto, Port-au-Prince ma ville, 2010, 57 minutes (English version).

This film portrays Port-au-Prince as a city under siege, a victim of overpopulation, ecological degradation and the lack of urban infrastructures.

ANTONIN Arnold, Jacques Roumain: La passion d’un pays, 2010, (in 2 parts for a total of 114 minutes) (English version).

This full length documentary allows us to discover the work and the turbulent life of Haiti’s most famous writers of Haiti and one of its most famous politicians. It is surprising how the issues he raised almost a century ago remain intensely relevant in the present circumstances.