Batay Vetye Film Screening
About this Event
Highlander Research and Education Center and Al’Ikens Plancher present our second installment of Sinema Chat in Miami commemorating Batay Vètyè, the Battle of Vertières, fought on November 18, 1803.
Vertières was the final major battle of the Haitian Revolution. On November 18, the Haitian revolutionary army defeated French forces under General Donatien de Rochambeau, ending Napoleon’s attempt to restore French colonial control over Saint-Domingue. The French capitulation that followed cleared the way for Jean-Jacques Dessalines to declare Haiti’s independence on January 1, 1804. January 1 is remembered as Haitian Independence Day. May 18 commemorates the Haitian flag created during the revolutionary war. November 18 marks the decisive military victory that made independence possible. Yet outside Haiti, Vertières receives far less public attention than the commemorations that surround it. Scholarship on the battle has examined precisely this tension between its enormous historical importance and its disappearance from much of the broader historical record.
That question of memory gives the November Sinema Chat its purpose: What happens when people remember the symbols of freedom but lose contact with the struggle that produced them?
What changes when that history is restored to the center of the conversation?
The program will use film, historical context, and an audience-led Kreyòl conversation to connect Vertières to larger questions of Haitian sovereignty, occupation, migration, cultural memory, diaspora, and the continuing struggle over how Haiti and Haitian people are represented.
Batay Vètyè creates an opportunity to go deeper into the history underneath that cultural identity and to connect that history to questions Haitian communities are confronting now.
Agenda
🕑: 03:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Short Film selections: Prestige, La Vie, Tifi, KONPA, Boat People
Host: Al'ikens Plancher
🕑: 05:30 PM - 07:00 PM
The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti
Host: Alain Martin
🕑: 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Sinema Chat
Host: Al'ikens Plancher
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00
