[R-G] Ghosts of Cite Soleil: Don’t Believe the Hype

[Anthony Fenton]

Ghosts of Cite Soleil: Don’t Believe the Hype
by Charlie Hinton / November 17th, 2007

The director is Danish, not German, but Ghosts of Cite Soleil
makes heroes of the made-in-Washington leaders of Haiti’s 2004 coup in
a manner reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl’s adoration for Adolf Hitler
in her famous film from the 1930s, Triumph of the Will. It
builds a web of lies — lies of omission and lies of commission — into
the “Big Lie” — a stylized, decontextualized, post-modern, sexy/violent
piece of propaganda disguised as a documentary, full of guns but
signifying nothing.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil claims to reveal the intimate personal lives of two gangsters who are brothers, Bily and 2Pac, in the deprived Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. When introducing them to several foreign journalists, filmmaker Kevin Pina (Harvest of Hope, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits)
made the following comment, “Billy and I had a falling out over the
question of his accepting money from foreign journalists to hype this
question of Aristide and gangsters. The more they paid the more
outlandish became his claims …”

The director, Asger Leth, would have us believe the majority of
people of Cite Soleil don’t support President Aristide, and that those
who do are forced to do so by armed gangsters. He ignores the fact that
massive pro-Aristide demonstrations have taken place in Cite Soliel
repeatedly since the coup. In one scene, a Cite Soleil crowd shouts,
“Five full years, Five full years.” Leth translates, but does not
explain the significance — the people want Aristide back to finish his
full five-year term.

The film doesn’t tell us that “Opposition leaders” Andy Apaid and
Charles Henry Baker are also sweatshop owners who hate Aristide because
he wanted to raise the minimum wage and make them pay taxes, which the
rich don’t do in Haiti.

We’re told President Aristide left voluntarily — no mention of his
kidnapping by the US military and his ongoing banishment from the
continent. We see jubilant crowds of Aristide opponents waving as the
coup makers drive into town, giving the impression most Haitians
supported the coup. We don’t see the US, French, and Canadian soldiers
guarding the route and making the entrance possible. We don’t learn
that Port-au-Prince was totally defended the day of Aristide’s
kidnapping, and the coup leaders would never have been able to take it
over militarily. Instead Uncle Sam came to the rescue.

We’re not told that Louis Jodel Chamblain worked with the Duvalier
dictatorship’s brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that
following a military coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the
“operations guy” for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of
murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang
rape into Haiti as a military weapon.

We’re not told that Guy Phillipe is a former Haitian police chief
who was trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s, or
that the US embassy admitted that Phillipe was involved in the
transhipment of narcotics, one of the key sources of funds for
paramilitary attacks on the poor in Haiti. He says the man he most
admires is former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Leth portrays
both of these men as credible spokespersons, not gangsters.

Where did the weapons of the coup-makers come from? Who organized
and trained them? Who spent tens of millions of dollars to create an
“opposition movement” in Haiti? The United States is the real ghost in
this film — it simply does not exist, except for its official version
of events, scripted by George W. Bush, which Ghosts of Cite Soleil follows scrupulously.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil plays like a manipulative music
video, featuring music by Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, also the
executive producer, who supported the coup and pushed the State
Department line among the conscious hip-hop community and progressive
celebrities in Hollywood. This contrasts to the principled stand of
Danny Glover, Ruby Dee and her late, great husband Ossie Davis. You can
almost hear the violins behind Chamblain, as he talks about his return
to Haiti, but the music becomes dissonant and menacing behind Aristide
or behind 2Pac and Bily, who speak English no less, but we never learn
why. Like we never learn who, or why about anything in this movie, a
piece of soft core propaganda, cleverly, consciously, and seductively
made. Candy may be sweet, but it rots your teeth.

				
				Charlie Hinton is with the Haiti Action Committee. Read other articles by Charlie, or visit Charlie's website.



http://www.haitisolidarity.net/