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Event
Tickets at door only: Kanaval: A People's History of Haiti in Six Chapters
*We have closed advanced ticket sales for this film. Some tickets will be available at the door.*
KANAVAL (75 minutes) (2022)
Film Screening and Discussion with Filmmaker Leah Gordon & Musician and Culture Worker Bruce Sunpie Barnes. (BIOS BELOW)
Kanaval is a visually arresting award-winning feature documentary that is set in the present but tells the rich story of Haitis past, as we follow a number of carnival performers in the lead up to and during the annual Jacmel Mardi Gras. These performers relate their own personal histories as well as the stories of their carnival characters, representing moments and people from the distant and not so distant Haitian past.
Interwoven with the interviews, testimonies and observational footage, is archive material drawn from a wide variety of sources to enhance our understanding of Haitian history and culture from the time of the indigenous Taino through to the present day.
Every year in Jacmel, a small coastal city in the south of Haiti, local people take to the streets during carnival time to perform and commemorate moments from the unique history of their country and to pay homage to their Vodou spirits. Leah Gordon, one of the co-directors, started documenting Jacmels carnival in 1995 and returned subsequently over the next 24 years to photograph the carnival characters to produce the celebrated book, Kanaval, which was published in 2010 and updated and republished 2021.
This is not a carnival of sequins and sound systems found elsewhere in the Caribbean, but a celebration of rebellion and resistance resonating through the centuries. Whatever Jacmel carnival lacks in glitz and spectacle, it makes up for in home-grown surrealism and poetic metaphors. The lives of the indigenous Taino Indians, the Slaves Revolt of 1791, the establishment of Haiti as the western hemispheres first Black Republic in 1804, the debt forced upon Haiti by the French, and more recently state corruption are all played out using drama and costume on Jacmels streets during Carnival - or Kanaval in Haitian Kreyol.
There are extravagant, many-peopled troupes which can totally overtake the streets, such as the Zel Maturin, satin clad devils in papier maché masks with four foot hinged wooden wings which they smack together dangerously and the Lanse Kòd, hordes of behorned, shirtless men, skin shining with an oily patina of cane spirit, syrup and charcoal, who rage the streets, ropes in hand, before diving communally into the ocean at the end of the day. But there are also lone, idiosyncratic performers too, for whom the character and costume rep- resent their own intensely personal spiritual visions, such as Bounda pa Bounda, who enacts a Vodou vision given to him by the spirits in a dream.
Kanaval is people taking history into their own hands and moulding it into whatever they decide.
DIRECTORS Leah Gordon & Eddie Hutton Mills
PRODUCERS Natasha Dack Ojumu & Leah Gordon
BIOS for Post-screening conversation:
Leah Gordon co-director/producer
Leah is a photographer, filmmaker, curator, and writer. Leah makes work on the links between the Slave trade and the inductrial revolution, and grassroots religious, class and folk histories. Gordons film and pho- tographic work has been exhibited internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the Dakart Biennale and the National Portrait Gallery, UK. Her photography book Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti was first published in 2010 and republished in 2021. She is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; was the adjunct curator for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; was the co-curator of Kafou: Haiti, History & Art at Nottingham Contemporary, UK; and was the curator of PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince at Pioneer Works, NYC in 2018. Gordon was the co-director & producer for A PIGS TALE for Channel 4/Arte and her art films have been in exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, UK; MCA, Sydney; BRIC, NYC, USA; Musee de lHomme, Paris & the DuSable Museum, Chicago.
Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a veteran musician, park ranger, actor, former high school biology teacher, former college football All-American, and former NFL player (Kansas City Chiefs). Sunpie Barnes' career has taken him far and wide, and he has traveled to over 35 countries playing his own style of blues, zydeco and Afro-Louisiana music incorporating Caribbean and African influenced rhythms and melodies. He is a multi-instrumentalist playing piano, percussion, harmonica, and he learned to play accordion from some of the best, including Fernest Arceneaux, John Delafose, and Clayton Sampy. With his musical group Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots, he has played festivals and concerts across New Orleans and the US, as well as internationally, and they have recorded 5 critically acclaimed CDs. Sunpie is deeply involved in New Orleans parade culture and takes his music to the streets. He is Second Chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, one of the oldest existing carnival groups in New Orleans, and a member of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
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LocationThe Broad Theater (View)
636 N. Broad St
New Orleans, LA 70119
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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