A Review - Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits

[bcholmes]

So, a few weeks ago, the Toronto Haiti Action Committee screened the latest edit of Kevin Pina's documentary, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits. I've been meaning, since then, to write up a brief review of the flick, but have been too busy over the last few weeks.

First, at the screening, I brought up the point about how this film compares/contrasts with Ghosts of Cité Soleil.

I had the opportunity to watch Ghosts a year and a half ago at the Toronto International Film Festival. And the showing really bothered me. The film seemed to make this simple thesis: that one of the most important things to know about Haiti is that there are bad people there -- gangsters, essentially -- and they hang out in Site Soley and disrupt the peace and murder people. The other implication it plays up is that these gangsters have been taking direction from Aristide, who has been using the gangs to commit violence against his enemies. I think that both of those claims are fishy.

Unfortunately, this film received a lot of attention. Cameron Bailey of the Festival stood before the audience and said that "this is the film people will be talking about." Asger Leth went on to win a Directors Guild Award for Best Director of a Documentary Feature. And the hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean served as executive producer. I remember during the Q&A after the film, one Haitian man stood up and said that he thought that the position put forth was pretty one-sided. Wyclef Jean replied that if the questioner felt that there was another perspective, the questioner should get a camera and go to Haiti and film it. Which, well, in one sense, okay, but in another sense, grrrr.

I guess I mention that because some of what I want to say about Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits relates to what I kind of want the film to be. I want it to be an answer to the simplistic narrative of Ghosts. And I suppose that that's automatically a bias I bring to the film: really, it should stand on its own merits. It isn't a "response" film -- it's a film with its own things to say. So I worry that I won't do a review justice.

I will say that this is the third cut of the film I've seen. Even from the first version, it was clear that Kevin has amazing footage. He lived in Haiti for several years, and managed to capture a ton of footage of some of the most important events. The key problem that I had with the first cut of the film I saw was that there are so many important events that if you're not already familiar with the people involved, it can all become a soup of names and dates and it just won't seem to make sense.

There were certainly important segments that hit home. It was clear, for example, that far too many innocent people were being killed in the crossfire while official forces were trying to kill those bandits. One can easily become horrified with number of shots of dead or wounded people.

The second edit streamlined the information quite a bit. A few more talking heads and title cards helped to explain to the audience the significance of what we were seeing. The third edit went even further, and included Kevin Pina talking directly to a lot of the points. (He said to me, at dinner after the event, that he heard my plea for some kind of narrative, and went with it. It works. I'm really happy with where it is now, but I feel compelled to point out that narrative didn't have to be narration. In any event, the latest cut is easily the tightest, most coherent edit I've seen.)

I think the film really successfully addresses these points:

1. Aristide didn't lose the support of the people, contrary to what the outside world reported. It's true that not everyone in Haiti loved Aristide in much the same way that not everyone in the US loves Obama. When Aristide was removed, there were massive demonstrations, and Pina has some great footage, there. (One quibble: I don't recall hearing the film comment on the significance of the demonstrators holding up five fingers -- I think it'd be a nice addition).
2. That the Haitian National Police are often the perpetrators of violence and human rights abuses, and that they've been enabled by the foreign powers. I think Pina's footage here, is pretty amazing, but sobering. I have only one quibble. Some of the most striking footage of death wrought by MINUSTAH and the PNH are pixelated. Kevin tells me that a lot of audiences just can't handle seeing the pictures. I find that depressing -- that people are more comfortable not knowing what's happening in their names.
3. That numerous members of Lavalas were imprisoned during the interim government, on trumped up charges. I think the footage of So Ann, in particular, is great. The story is that she's plotting violence, so she was arrested. She's a old woman and moves a bit slowly. The idea that she's a threat is so blatantly a fabrication. Pina's treatment of this point in the film is flawless. I'm glad that he ends the film showing how, after months of jail time, each of these cases is shown to be groundless.

I don't think that the film is really trying to tell the story about the coup against Aristide. Certainly Pina puts a good, quick summary of the rise of Aristide and the two coups.

There is a point in the film where one can develop the opinion that MINUSTAH isn't quite as complicit as they probably are. There's some good footage of General Pereira reacting to the difficulties that the PNH violence has created for the UN soldiers.

I actually have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think that MINUSTAH is deeply, deeply complicit in death and abuses in Haiti. And I kinda want Pina's film to just be more damning. But, if I'm honest with myself, I think that members of the MINUSTAH leadership have been divided, and that their relationship to the mission has been complicated. I think it's probably more fair of Pina to show that these were people in a place where they didn't know the culture or the politics (or even the fucking language), and they were being given unreasonable mission objectives by people who weren't getting their own hands dirty. And I think there's evidence to suggest that people like Generals Pereira and Bacillar wrestled with the assignments they were handed, and flailed a bit. But ultimately they caused great damage to the Haitian people.

And it's funny. Part of me doesn't want Pina to be that fair. At the end of the day, I think that it's the job of a soldier to refuse orders to commit human rights abuses.

My final assessment is this: I think that the film is very good -- I think it has footage that you're not going to see anywhere else, and it tells a story that I think we (in places like Canada from which these actions are directed) need to be aware of.

As I was watching the closing credits, I found myself eagerly waiting to see if the blind guitar player was still in this cut. There's something pretty amazing about finishing the film hearing this man's impromptu song in which he asks why the soldiers are shooting him when he's just a blind man with a guitar.