Haitian Appreciation Thread

loyola llothta

loyola llothta

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MidniteJay said:
So any of yall heard about the capture of Clifford Brandt? Dude was like behind most those abductions and murders occuring in Haiti :wtf:

Getting names of Haitians traveling from U.S. and then paying gangs to snatch them off the streets. :damn:
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Yeah the US help them. During that time idiot haitian Americans was trick to believe poor haitians was doing it when haitians in Haiti was telling it was wealthy Haitian business family

 
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James Earl Jones talking about a white man playing Henri Christophe.



I get what he's saying. But I don't necessarily agree.
 
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get these nets

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Above the fray.
For Da Bag said:
James Earl Jones talking about a white man playing Henri Christophe.



I get what he's saying. But I don't necessarily agree.
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Ellen-Holly-sexy-0.jpg


Applaud Ellen Holly for that 1972 ETHER







June 11, 1972, Page 1Buy Reprints The New York Times Archives
DEAR ANTHONY QUINN: ON MAY 12, on the dikk Cavett Show, you stated your intention to produce a film in Haiti in which you would play the part of the black Haitian emperor, Henry Christophe. A few days later, the May 17th issue of Variety ran an article entitled “FILMING IN HAITI: QUINN BLACKS UP,” that restated that intention.

Ideally, it could be hoped that a film industry that would find it unthinkable to have cast Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll as Nicholas and Alexandra would find it equally unthinkable to countenance Anthony Quinn in the role of Christophe who was, after all, of 100 per cent pure black Sudanese extraction. Unfortunately, in regard to blacks, experience teaches that a double standard invariably applies so it is entirely possible, even in the year 1972, that such a distressing event might actually take place.

Distressing because Christophe was, quite possibly, the most remarkable single figure in all of black history. Distressing, because a generation of black children searching so earnestly to define their racial identity would learn of him for the first time from a screen image that presents him as a white man in makeup.

Few epic roles have ever been available to black actors. This alone should deter a sensitive white man from expropriating unto himself one of the few heroic roles a black man is so eminently qualified to play. But what is at stake here is something infinitely more important than the mere fact that a black actor would be deprived of a role that should rightfully be his. What is at stake here is the indelible nature of the screen image itself.

Unlike the theater, where a particular production with all its. strengths and flaws mercifully disappears into limbo on its last day of performance, once an image is committed to film, it achieves a relentless kind of immortality. It richochets from country to country, continent to continent, throughout the civilized world. After its initial years of exposure in major world markets, it lingers many years longer on the fringes of society, appearing on double bills and at drivein movies and eventually ends up on late‐night television where it is ground out again and again, year in and year out.

It is the indelible quality of the screen image

Decades later, we are still haunted by Clark Gable as Rhett assuring Scarlett that he doesn't give a damn, Humphrey Bogart asking Sam to play it again in “Casablanca,” Garbo gazing into the distance in the last shots of “Queen Christina.”

It is the indelible quality of the screen image—the fact that we must live with a given screen image for the balance of our lifetime—that makes it so profoundly dis turbing that the virgin screen image of what is quite possibly the most extraordinary pure black man this world has ever seen should appear in the person of a white man. More than disturbing. More than disturbing. Intolerable.

For generations, the film industry has manipulated the image of the black man and presented him as debased and degraded. We are still, God help us, living with the screen image of Willie Best on the Late Show. As we move into an era in which it is finally possible to present the black man as an epic hero, how much progress have we made if dangerous precedents are set and these marvelous roles in their virgin outings are systematically poached by white stars better equipped by virtue of their greater power in the film industry to seize control of them? Must we live through Alec Guinness as Toussaint L'Ouverture and Charlton Heston as a prince of Benin? How much will any of us ever learn of the grandeur and the magic of blackness if all in our history that has been majestic and target than life begins to be relentlessly mined and plundered by whites in the present with the same casual cynicism that our music has been mined and plundered by whites in the past?

On the Cavett show, you left the impression that, were it not for you, this history would be sadly neglected. Not so. Last year in the pages of The Times, I described my own efforts to bring Christophe to film. These efforts are now within inches of success. Yaphet Kotto is involved in doing a film about another of that remarkable black Haitian triumvirate, Jean Jacques Dessalines. Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte have appeared on television talk shows and stated future intentions to film the history of Christophe. Other black writers have produced scripts about the third member of the triumvirate, Toussaint L'Ouverture. Believe me,. the black community has a deep concern for its own history. It is only within the last year, however, that it has paid in enough money at film box offices to achieve any leverage in the industry. Now that it has, that history will lot languish without you.

Nevertheless, as a producer, one welcomes you to the ranks. Please do produce your film. There simply cannot be enough films done on this particular historical era for it is a brilliant one and fascinating enough to support a whole new genre of filmmaking. All one asks is that you show a decent regard for the sensibilities and emotional needs of the black community and relinquish the title role to a black actor. For it is to a black man that the role of Henry Christophe —at least in its initial exposure—most rightfully and most needfully belongs.

Sincerely,

ELLEN HOLLY

New York City
 
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