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ABSTRACT: This article traces the history of cinema in Haiti from the appearance of the first cinematograph there in December 1899 through to the contemporary period. Paying attention both to the kinds of films Haitians have watched, and to the various types of films that Haitian filmmakers have produced, the article provides a rare insight into the culture and politics of cinema in Haiti.
The Coming of the Cinema
The historiography on Haitian cinema is very limited. I only know of one double issue of the journal Conjonction devoted to Haitian cinema (published by the Institut Français d'Haïti), which came out in 1983; a book written by me, published in the same year in Caracas, Venezuela, entitled Matériel pour une préhistoire du cinéma haïtien (Material for a Prehistory of Haitian Cinema); and an article by me in the book by Guy Hennebel and Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón, published in 1981 under the title of Cinéma de l'Amérique Latine (Latin American Cinema). Moreover, a lot of the information published in Conjonction came from this article. The authors revealed to me later that they did not risk citing me in their bibliography because of the Duvalier dictatorships.
The cinematograph came to Haiti at almost at the same time as it appeared in the other countries of the world. On 14 December 1899, a representative of the Lumière cinematograph made the first public projection at the little Seminary. The following day, this same representative, Joseph Filippi, who was stopping off in Haiti, filmed a fire in Port-au-Prince. There are in the archives of the American Library of Congress numerous moving images from the period of the US occupation from 1915-34, showing the actions of the marines and official ceremonies. There are also some images filmed in Haiti on health care, agriculture, or scenes from social life, particularly Carnival, in the Library of Congress archives and at Pathé-Ciné.
The first continuous projections, after the visit of the Lumière brothers' representative, took place from 1907 at the Grand Hôtel of Pétionville, then from 1914 at the Parisiana, which is situated at the Champ-de-Mars. The Parisiana was the first large cinema theater (with around five hundred seats) in the country. In 1933, the Ciné Eden opened its doors in Cap-Haïtien. The...