Haiti land of tragedy, land of hope / Film for the Humanities and Sciences.

Fifty-five (55) minutes.

Executive producer, Antoine Leonard-Maestrati ; Producers, RFO, Beau comme une image ; Writer, Antoine Leonard-Maestra ; Research, Jean-Marc Bramy ; Editor, Dorothee Audiber ; Photography, Jean-Francois Chalut ; Mixing, Bruno Haentjens.

Narrator: Peter Hudson.

Voices: Hester Wilcox, Gary Granville, Matthew Geczy, Paul Barrett, Peter Hudson.

The numbers alone are stunning: eight million inhabitants, seventy percent of whom live below the poverty line; a life expentancy of fifty years; a sixty-five percent illiteracy rate; and a seventy percent unemployment rate. Such is the recent population in Haiti, which ironically had its origins cast in optimism: the Haitians were the first people to abolish slavery in 1797 and establish a black republic. Yet the following years have brought the island a succession of violence, chaotic politics, and the railroading of national soverignty for the benefit of few. This thought-provoking documentary traces what Jean-Bertrand Aristide calls Haiti's "linear history" back to its discovery by Columbus in the late 15th century and the violent process of colonization to the present.