René Depestre, retour à Jacmel
2006 • 26 min
En Février 2005, pour la première fois depuis 60 ans, René Depestre est de retour à Jacmel, sa ville natale, inspiratrice de toute son œuvre.
L’accueil de la population est à la mesure de l’événement.
L’écrivain retrouve des lieux chers, sa maison natale, la pharmacie où travaillait son père, donne une conférence, retourne à son école primaire dominant la splendide baie de Jacmel, au lycée de la ville …
Il fait ainsi une moisson d’images et de sons pour redonner du souffle à ses futures œuvres.
A Lézignan-Corbières, sa patrie d’adoption, il revient sur ce voyage qui reste pour lui comme un rêve éveillé auquel, à 80 ans, il ne croyait plus.
Production
Les Films du Horla
Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
Auteur-Réalisateur
Patrick CAZALS
Image
Jacques MALNOU
Patrick CAZALS
Son, Montage
Jacques MALNOU
Patrick CAZALS
Film disponible en copie DV Cam et en DVD.
Diffusion
- Festival de Jacmel
- Institut Français d’Haïti
RENE DEPESTRE , DIARY OF A PHENOMENAL SEAMAN. 63 min
In 1804, Haïti became the first black colony to win its independance.
In 2004, from his adopted town in France at the foot of the Corbières, the poet-writer René Depestre – the prolific author of such works as Encore une mer à traverser, Non-assistance à personne en danger and Hadriana dans tous mes rêves – reflects on the tragic fate of his native island,on his works and his own journey through the century…
At the young age of 19, Depestre published his first collection of poems, Etincelles, which earned him instant recognition. As a member of the revolutionary student movment of 1946,he was then arrested and emprisoned before being banished from the island; Over the course of his numerous travels – in France but also in Prague, Cuba, Austria, Chile, Argentina and Brazil – the nomadic poet crossed paths with many of the world’s leading political and literary figures : Breton,Eluard, Neruda, Aragon, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao, Ho Chi Min…
In the automn of his life, he remains an ardent witness, ever vigilant and unusually lucid.
Shot in Port-au-Prince and in Jacmel (his home town) in Haiti, in Fort-de-France,Prague, this film is interwoven with testimony from Aimé Césaire, Régis Debray, René de Obaldia, Maurice Pons, Yannick Lahens, Laënec Hurbon…
Best portrait International Art Film Festival (Montreal 2006 )
Fill-up:
RETURN TO JACMEL. 26 min
On February 2005, for the first time since sixty years, french-haïtian writer and poet Rene Depestre comes back to Jacmel, his birthplace,a small town in Haïti. He enjoys visiting all the places he cherised during his childhood, so determining for his work. He gives several successful conferences. He remembers his path with all his friends.
DIALOGUE WITH AIME CESAIRE. 30 min
In his office of Fort de France’s emeritus mayor, on the first floor of the City Theater, Aimé Cesaire tells us about his itinerary as a poet and a militant.
He highlights his great friends René Depestre and Léopold Sédar Senghor, reads and comments on his greatest book : Cahier d’un retour au pays natal.
