This program looks at how the historic challenges of Haiti informs their modern economy. But the program also looks at humanity, spirit and activism in Haiti that keeps them fighting towards social justice and economic equity.
Film Program – Karen McMullen, Guest Curator
An Excavation of Us (Le Déterrement de Nous) (2017), dir. Shirley Bruno:
The shadows of Napoleon's army fall upon a boat traveling through the mysterious cave named after her legend Marie Jeanne, a female soldier who fought in the Haitian Revolution. It is this battle inside her cave that will become the most successful slave revolution in history.
Agwe, dir. Samuel Suffren:
Francois leaves Haiti by sailboat for the USA, leaving behind Mirlande, his six months pregnant wife. Ten years later, without any news, the woman who still hopes and waits offers a sacrifice to Agwe, the divinity of the oceans.
Elena, dir. Michèle Stephenson:
In 2013, the Dominican Republic’s government stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Elena and her family stand to lose their legal residency there if they don't get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of bureaucracy in a racist, hostile society, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her forefathers.
Exile, dir. Richard Sénécal:
While in Paris, Haitian director Richard Sénécal speaks with Gessica Geneus, an actress he worked with on many of his films. Gessica shares her testimonial of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and how it is to be away from Haiti.
Panelists:
Dr. Regine O. Jackson - Dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media, and Arts Division and Professor of Sociology at Morehouse College
Dr. Vanessa L. Deane - Assistant Clinical Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service; Director of Urban Planning
Shirley Bruno – Director, An Excavation of Us
Samuel Suffren – Director, Agwe
Michèle Stephenson – Director, Elena
Moderated by Sabrina Schmidt Gordon – Producer, Director and Editor
Presented by Creatively Speaking Films and IRPPE in The Schools of Public Engagement at the New School.
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Michèle Stephenson pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells emotionally driven personal stories of resistance and identity that are created by, for and about communities of color and the Black diaspora
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Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and impact strategist from NYC. Since her Emmy-winning editing debut at WGBH, she has distinguished herself as a producer, editor, and director. She is a Women at Sundance Fellow, and a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Most recently, she became one of four recipients of the Dear Producer Award, recognizing excellence in independent filmmaking.
Sabrina’s latest film, To the End, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Sabrina’s directing debut was the Emmy-nominated BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, which she co-directed, co-produced, and edited, winning the Best Film Directed by a Woman of Color award at the African Diaspora International Film Festival in 2016. She is also the co-producer and editor of Documented, the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning undocumented journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas. The film had record viewership on CNN, and was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary Film.
Sabrina produces, directs and edits content for many video journalism platforms and organizations. Among these are The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Frontline, American Masters, The Ford Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Witness, Agricultural Missions, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, and more. She also produces and consults on engagement and impact campaigns for documentary films and other media projects. Sabrina has a Masters in Journalism and serves on many media panels and juries.
Film curator and programmer Karen McMullenf is Head of Programming at Urbanworld and Senior Programmer at DOC NYC film festivals. Formally, she was Lead Curator for New Voices in Black Cinema and Head of Programming for the TIDE Film Festival. She has been a juror at Pan African, Trinidad + Tobago, Cleveland International, and Bentonville film festivals, and on the nominating committees for Gotham Awards, Carey Institute, Black Public Media, and Cinema Eye Honors. Karen conducts panels and interviews for HBO, Netflix, Apple, Peacock, NY African Film Festival, and others, and appears on television and radio as a media expert. She has editing credits on features and shorts, and was a professor of film post-production at Long Island University. Karen graduated from Brown University with concentrations in French Studies and International Relations.
Dr. Vanessa L. Deane is Assistant Clinical Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service and Director of the Urban Planning program at NYU Wagner. For Fall 2022, she is Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France. Dr. Deane is also an inaugural fellow in the Public Voices Fellowship Program of the Op-Ed Project in partnership with New York University.
Dr. Deane's research praxis is rooted in the political economy of disasters, primarily in small island developing states. In light of a changing climate and rising instances of natural hazards, she is currently exploring the postcolonial adaptive capacity of select francophone nations facing current and imminent disaster threats.
She won the 2021-2022 Outstanding Decentralization Paper Award for Latin America and the Caribbean for her analysis of Haiti's institutional development challenges, accentuated by the 2010 earthquake and its aftermath. Other accolades include the 2020 "Professor of the Year," the2018 “Impact Award – Young Women Rising” by the American Women for International Understanding and induction into the Haitian Roundtable’s 1804 List as one of the “Top 5 to Watch” among Haitian-Americans in 2015. She was also named one of “40 Urban Leaders Under40” by Next City in 2014.
Dr. Deane obtained her Ph.D. in Public and Urban Policy from The New School and her Master of Urban Planning from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis University with her Bachelor of Arts in African and African American Studies and in American Studies, along with double minors in Education Studies and in Social Justice and Social Policy. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of Pinchina Consulting.
Dr. Regine O. Jackson is the Dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media, and Arts Division and Professor of Sociology at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. She was also the 2022 President of the Haitian Studies Association, a professional organization that supports scholarship on Haiti and provides a forum for the exchange and dissemination of ideas and knowledge about Haiti.
Jackson specializes in Haitian migration and diaspora studies, sociology of race and place, American immigration, and spatial inequality. She is the editor of Geographies of the Haitian Diaspora (Routledge, 2011) and The Context of Black Lives: Race and Space in Two American Cities; and author of Boston Haitians: Navigating Race, Place and Belonging in a Majority-Minority City. Other work has been published in interdisciplinary journals and edited volumes. She has received grants and awards from the American Sociological Association, Social Science Research Council, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Ford Foundation, Spencer Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Before joining the leadership team in Academic Affairs at Morehouse, she taught at Agnes Scott College, Emory University, and the University of Richmond. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, but was raised in the Boston Haitian community in the late 1970s and 1980s. She is a proud mother of three who currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
Shirley Bruno's films and video works draw from her Haitian heritage preserving and radicalizing her ancestral traditions and mythology. She creates modern myths that expose the slippery, impermanent line between the material and spiritual world, between documentary and fiction, collective memory and history. Shirley is a graduate of London Film School and Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, her works have been presented at major contemporary art events and film festivals across the globe.
Michèle Stephenson pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells emotionally driven personal stories of resistance and identity that are created by, for and about communities of color and the Black diaspora. Her stories intentionally reimagine and provoke thought about how we engage with and dismantle the internalized impact of systems of oppression. Her films American Promise and Going to Mars was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Her current documentary Stateless is nominated for a Canadian Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Most recently, Stephenson collaborated as co-director on the magical realist immersive series on racial terror, The Changing Same, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival 2021. Along with her writing partners Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, Stephenson won an NAACP Image Award for Excellence in a Literary Work for their book Promises Kept. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, a Guggenheim Artist Fellow and a Creative Capital Artist.
