GHOSTS OF CITÉ SOLEIL (USA/DENMARK, 2006) (tbc).
Wednesday, 27th February 2008

Denmark/USA, 2005. Directed by Asger Leth with Milos Loncarevic.
Photography (Colour): Milos Loncarevic, Frederik Jacobi and Asger Leth.
Music: Wyclef Jean. Certificate: “15”. Length: 89 minutes.
With Haitian 2pac, Bily, Lele, Reginald, Franzo, Andy Apaid and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Seeing Ghosts of Cité Soleil was for me the most emotionally charged cinematic experience that I have had in recent times, and I believe that it deserves to go down as a classic. In part that is because it does something that I have never come across in cinema before, but when I went to the press screening I had no idea what it would be like and certainly had no expectation of a film so remarkable. What little I did know can be simply stated. I was aware that it was set in Haiti and that Cité Soleil was the slum area of Port-au-Prince: so far so good in that, aside from the recent French drama Heading South, Haiti has rarely been featured on screen and consequently the location promised some novelty value. But I understood also that it was the story of two brothers, 2pac and Bily, both of them gang leaders, of their own love-hate relationship and of the romantic triangle that developed when each in turn became involved with a French relief worker named Lele. This sounded less promising, and the more so because of late there have been a surfeit of dramas in which the central characters in whom we are expected to take an interest are unsavoury criminal types, often hard drinkers and either drug-dealers or drug-takers. These are the kind of films which if one were to cut out the expletives in the dialogue then the running length would be reduced by half. My fear as I set put to see Ghosts of Cité Soleil was that it would be just another film of that type.

It was only when I got to the preview theatre and opened the press kit that I realised to my total surprise that the film I was about to see was not a fictional tale with actors but a documentary. It had been made by the Danish film-maker Asger Leth who had previously done TV work and had contributed as a writer and assistant director to feature films. In addition he had done second unit work on The Five Obstructions filmed by Lars von Trier with Asger’s father Jorgen Leth. But when Asger left for Haiti it was in the hope of bringing off something far more substantial than anything he had attempted before. The gamble was all the greater because the project involved shooting in conditions so hazardous that both Leth and his Serbian co-director and photographer Milos Loncarevic would be putting their lives at risk.

The year was 2004 and Leth began filming while Jean-Bertrand Aristide was still president. Leth elected to record the day-to-day life of 2pac at a time when he and his brother Bily were involved with Aristide’s secret army of armed men, the Chimères, having been recruited for that job by Aristide along with three other gang leaders. As we get to know 2pac and Bily we discover that their responses to this involvement have been quite different. An invitation of this kind from Aristide was an offer you couldn’t refuse but, whereas Bily became a loyal supporter of the president, 2pac was far more questioning. He had an interest in music and in rap in particular, not merely as a listener but as a performer. In other circumstances he might have been somebody who would become a musician, and as it was he secretly recorded songs of his own in which he denounced Aristide.

It is, of course, quite extraordinary that 2pac and the others should have been won over by Leth and his crew since the filming lets us into their private world, not excluding the occasion when Bily’s girl friend, Lele, reveals to him that she has taken up with another man and then discloses that her new lover is his brother 2pac. One knows that some documentaries don’t hesitate to include re-enactments of events which they pass off as the real thing, but in this film there is throughout a sense of authenticity that suggests that everything was literally for real. What we do know is that, as is often the case with preparing a documentary, there were hours and hours of material shot. When George Hickenlooper, the man famed for his great documentary about the filming of Apocalypse Now, saw a rough cut of Leth’s footage, he chose to become involved and he is credited as executive producer. Indeed, some of the rawness of this film which so crucial to its sense of authenticity may owe something to him.

What is revealed by Ghosts of Cité Soleil is twofold. On the one hand, it’s a bleak, powerful depiction of life in a deprived area where lawlessness and desperation reign and where every day could be your last. But it’s also a portrait of a specific moment: the days when Aristide, the man who had been democratically elected but whose regime had failed Haiti by becoming increasingly repressive, was forced to flee. This was when the country’s rebels backed by America and France took over. At this point 2pac and Bily find themselves being hunted down because of their known association with Aristide. But, having virtually had no choice, they can be seen as people who have become caught up in a political situation not of their own making. This new development is portrayed with just as much power as the earlier scenes of their daily life in Cité Soleil, an area branded by the United Nations as “the most dangerous place on earth”.

Finally, I would like to turn to the question of who should see this film and who should stay away. There is no question whatever of this film being an entertainment and anyone who goes to the movies for escapism will find nothing here for them. But, if it’s not entertainment, I do believe that it’s art, and a work that is important on two levels, one general and one universal. Usually a film gains significantly if what is particular in it is also in some way universal. Because of its portrayal of individuals living in a place where political upheaval and violence engulf them, I consider that Ghosts of Cité Soleil does have just such a wider resonance in that it invites us to see parallels with the lives of ordinary people who happen to have their homes in Iraq or Afghanistan today. But, for once, I think that the more profound aspect lies in what is strictly specific to this work. It is sometimes suggested that one of the most important functions of art is to make you understand lives that are outside of your own experience and that is what happens here. The film never conceals the life-style that 2pac and Bily adopted as gangsters and it never tries to sentimentalise them to earn the sympathy of the audience. Everything we should dislike about them, and there is plenty, is openly displayed, but when, towards the close of the film, 2pac decides that he must try to get away to the Dominican Republic we feel a deep concern that he should achieve this. That concern is born of the simple fact that, however imperfect, he is a human being. To make us respond in that way is something that would be a worthy achievement if contained in a work of fiction but here truth proves to be more potent than fiction ever could be. Ghosts of Cité Soleil is a devastating work the like of which we have never seen before.

“Amazing” – Todd McCarthy, Variety.

“This is as appalling and viscerally compelling a documentary as will be released all year” – Daily Telegraph.

Programme notes by Mansel Stimpson