Just started to watch. I've seen a ton of HR docs; the fun thing about this so far is hearing @TiJanBosal & @FictionsofHaiti's voices as it opens.

Jean Casimir was in #ÉgalitéforAll but this is the first for Marlene. 2 of my FAVE scholars of the Rev. together https://twitter.com/MarkBowsherFilm/status/1346058685756399616

Beautifully shot. This is a MUCH better shot from the Champ de Mars than the I posted this morning!

And over a view of the Parc historique de la canne à sucre, @FictionsofHaiti declares: "It's the most clear-cut case for reparations, I think, that possibly exists!"

Salut @TiJanBosal - breaking down for us what we know about #Ayiti before Columbus's genocide.

Marlene, I did my best to screenshot you - hard to get one frozen shot while you're talking so animatedly. I love listening to you & that they came to Charlottesville to film you during this!

The last shot of Jean Casimir didn't have his title card, so here you go.

I wish I could show this to students! Maybe they can sign up for a History Hit trial?

We all knew @FictionsofHaiti was a art lover. Check out this lovely scene chez elle!

this shot. @FictionsofHaiti is hanging out, with her #deVastey book & @TiJanBosal's new Haitians: A Decolonial History.

I've got both of these books, but not as nice a workspace.

Some of you may be wondering why I'm not screenshotting Columbus, or Toussaint, or Haiti map images. BTDT! I always am most interested in a Haitian Rev. film with what makes it distinctive compared to others. Plus I like seeing these wonderful scholars on screen here!

This is why #screenshotting is creative - my screenshots are not necessarily what other people would freeze & blow up! So I could not resist grabbing this fleeting image - MUST show love to #TropicsofHaiti, @FictionsofHaiti's chef d'oeuvre. Type away, Marlene! Write some more!

Just to give y'all a taste of the film's animation.

Here's the Parc Historique labelled. So grateful to have gone there for a visit after first reading about it in @paulclammer's Haiti guide. SO moving & one of the only labelled lieux de mémoire, even though all of Haiti is is one....

Casmir is speaking movingly of the process by which enslavers tried to convince enslaved persons that they were nothing & they were owned - but also reminding us that enslaved persons (NOT "slaves") were not bound to believe this, and retained their humanity.

Ok, a bit of analysis. So far I love that the film did not begin by making the Haitian Rev. sound scary, violent, etc. We are beginning by getting to know how people were enslaved & how their enslavers tried to dehumanize them. Thumbs up on the frame so far.

I'm adding this too because I loved reading it at the Parc historique. And by loved, I mean I wept.... My Haitian friends feel that the terrain of the history of slavery & freedom is all around them, but the *memorializing* here did something to me.

Interrupting the narrative to give a to the people who shot this footage: Jean Rameces Demaratte in did all the amazing work at Casimir's home, at the Parc historique & around Haiti. Ryan Bedall shot Prof. Daut in Charlottesville.

I *love* the shots of the Parc hist. But just so we're clear, this is *not* from the time of slavery; this is a RR.

So I'll be your tour guide to make sure y'all know that the Occupation (1915-34) brought HASCO (H'n/Am sugar co - & once again s were forced to cut cane.

One *amazing* thing about this doc that I . So far, no omniscient (Western) narrator. Just 2 outstanding Haitian/diaspora scholars dropping TRUTH about what happened during slavery. It's very affecting. We're not in the Rev. yet. I love this frame so far. Marlene & Jean!

YES @FictionsofHaiti!!!!! Love love love that we are not starting in 1789 here & assuming that enslaved people revolted because they heard about the Rev. Thank you for talking about resistance over the decades. That's my kind of Haitian Revolution film!

This is also one of the only Haitian Rev. films where you're going to hear Casimir's insights about the COUNTER-PLANTATION SYSTEM. So happy with our talking head choices here!

Here's your signifier that the French Revolution has begun. I don't make the films, I only screen-capture them.

Here's s'thg I never learned in any Rev. film b4: @FictionsofHaiti plays piano!

(I'm sorry, but it's an extra bonus of this film that we're getting a tour of Marlene's gorgeous quarantine abode!) But seriously, super creative visuals during a pandemic!

(Marlene, don't kill me, I'm fangirling you while I'm listening to the narrative. I am professionally required to pay attention to every detail while I'm watching a Haitian Rev. film & to think about what's distinctive )

I'll add of course that the gens de couleur did not learn the idiom of universal rights only in 1789 in Paris - I think these ideas were circulating in the colony too, in institutions like the lodges. But there's only so much that can fit in a doc short...& certainly this...

...language was useful for them as they continued to press the case they had been making since the 1760s for equality with white colonists.

Oh, look, just like my book cover - as the signifier that the Haitian Rev. has begun. Very cool shot.

@fictionsofhaiti makes clear that Haitian revs. at first did not aim to kill enslavers - but to BURN THE PLACES where they were forced to labor. Destroying plantations, cane fields, etc. was most important - they were driven to kill colonists only to preserve that freedom.

Toussaint Louverture enters the scene only at min. 12 of 30 in this doc (other than his statue at the start). I like it!!! The Rev. didn't just start out of nowhere in 1791 of course.

I like this graphic illustrating how complicated the situation was on the island in 1793. - Toussaint had to triangulate not just between the French & the (Hn) revs, but also between the Spanish & British on the island.

LOVE how the editors just allowed Jean Casimir & Marlene Daut to *talk* - and then spliced back & forth their commentary without a narrator.

You're both brilliant, zanmi!!! What a treat.

Another thing I love here compared to some other docs: @TiJanBosal & @FictionsofHaiti are giving an extremely nuanced discussion of Toussaint. He was in a tough spot. Casimir asks us to put ourselves in his position, which is the way to understand it.

I need to advertise Jean Casimir's book in the middle of this. This is so brilliant, but you can also read the 400 pp. version: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469660486/the-haitians/. Grateful to @Soccerpolitics for trans'ing to make it much more accessible to North Americans.

YESSSSS @FictionsofHaiti (& of course @MarkBowsherFilm) I love that the first time we're hearing about violence it's about the genocidal brutality of the under Rochambeau. Too many non-Haitian films on the Rev. overemphasize Haitian violence while minimizing that of the Fr.

& now... Marlene is talking about what must be unsilenced: the dogs. French use of ferocious dogs to terrorize enslaved people does not get called out enough: during slavery (as @PCHAMOISEAU reminds us in #SlaveOldMan) but also *after* during the war to subdue s.

And Casimir reminds us that it was not a sudden thing with Rochambeau:

"The whole SYSTEM was genocidal" (before the slave trade was outlawed they preferred to keep repopulating rather than preserve life anyway).

Shoutout to Capois-La-Mort. Most non-Haitian docs leave him out even though he's so central to the victory of Haitians over Napoleon's troops.

OK!! This is a much more appropriate shot of the Nèg Mawon than in that awful white savior Axelle Red clip I posted this morning!!!

WOW!! I studied Jean-Pierre Boyer for a long time, but have never spotted an earring in a portrait of him. (yes, this is a minor detail for many of you. My thread is trying to be a public service. Please indulge me here. )

I should add that the framing Marlene is giving to Boyer, one that I have also articulated (about the difficult circumstance he was in) is not universal. The brilliant Alex Dupuy is much more critical of Boyer than Marlene or I on this point. His book...

...Rethinking the Haitian Revolution is absolutely worth reading. https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Haitian-Revolution-Independence-Recognition/dp/1442261110

@FictionsofHaiti is doing a fantastic job taking the viewer on a tour also of so much that happens after 1804. Super and to be able to break this down so clearly & compactly!

I'm done! Chapo ba to @MarkBowsherFilm. I have to say I was a little wary when you said you had just learned about the Haitian Rev.But you did an AMAZING job getting up to speed, choosing talking heads - & letting them SPEAK.

Gorgeous photography & editing. Super doc short.

Even if I might nuance a detail here or there, overall #IndependenceorDeath is a super introduction to the Haitian Rev., as Haitians understand it. *&* it's in English, unlike some of the Haitian docs.

Definitely will recommend to students in the future. Bravo & .