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The Occupation of Afghanistan lasted two decades, one year longer than our own intervention. Is Afghanistan better off today?  Puerto Rico is a territory of the US. Are they better off?

ALAIN MARTIN

Alain Martin’s much anticipated documentary The Forgotten Occupation exploring the history surrounding the American occupation of Haiti in 1915 has finally released its official trailer. We sat down with Martin to learn more about this endeavor, his team, what he hopes we can take away from this work and more. We had the opportunity to chat with him on the matter for our podcast back in 2018. Have a listen here.

We are so excited to finally view the trailer of this ongoing project! This movie has been long in the making, what major lessons have  you learned along the way? 

Artistic capital is just as significant as financial capital. I remember after we raised our 25k through Kickstarter, we were all elated thinking we had this in the bag. But after the first edit, the movie sucked and we eventually realized it was lacking in soul, in artistic direction. It took us another five years to figure out what we wanted to say and why.  

So I will say that one of the lessons learned here, when it comes to making a film, is to know what you have to say, why you want to say it and how you want to say it is quite significant. Second, irrespective of how historical a documentary is, films are made to entertain,  to engender connections with the audience. As problematic as this may sound, connecting and moving the audience is more important than the facts of your film. 

Lastly, the cavalry is not coming, you are the cavalry you seek. We kept waiting for some magical person to come around, we thought we had raised enough money for that magical person. But in the end, such person never showed up and we rescued the project ourselves. So in life, the best person to know is yourself. 

Tell us about the team that has made this film possible. 

Hans Augustave has really really been indispensable in the making of this film. He had a job with a production company in the city and that allowed us access to free equipment to shoot all the stuff we needed. This film as it is now ain’t possible without him. 

James Doran who I enlisted as an artist consultant ended up shooting the last third of production for free. His involvement really elevated the work. 

I have to also give a shout out to Professor Patrick Bellegarde Smith who nudged in the right direction in terms of which books to read and who to interview. Some of those interviews did wonders for the film. 

Intervention in Haiti is again being debated in the public sphere. How does your film contribute to that conversation?

That’s such an interesting question. In the intervening years before the occupation, Haiti, as a lot of people saw it then, was quite in a deplorable state, not unlike today. In an interview, the historian Roger Gaillard gave to Jean Dominique back in the 1960’s, he describes the sullen psyche of the young Haitians at the time. They were tired of the social-political conditions of their country. It had been liberated for an entire century and yet had nothing to show for it. In the three years before the US Occupation, Haiti had seven different presidents. So talk of a US Occupation was welcomed, for they saw it as the only way out. And honestly, they can be forgiven for this. We have to remember these were the days of the ascension of the American Empire. Immigrants were flocking to it by the millions. Stories of poor people becoming rich overnight in America abounded. 

Furthermore, this was also the beginning of a 20th century that was washing the world with so much technological marvel. The radio. The telephone. Film. The airplane. The automobile. And the United States was at the forefront of all that. So these young despairing Haitians desperately thought an American Occupation would grant them entrance into the modern world of the 20th century. They were of course mistaken. And it is the same today, Haiti is in such a deplorable state that many people are openly asking for American intervention. But they have, as examples, the previous interventions in Haiti, the intervention in Iraq. The Occupation of Afghanistan lasted two decades, one year longer than our own intervention. Is Afghanistan better off today?  Puerto Rico is a territory of the US. Are they better off? So our film contributes to this conversation by evincing this forgotten past of ours. It reminds us that history itself does not move along a linear process but rather through a cyclical one. Things happen. And then they happen again with new actors, over and over. 

What do you hope this film will offer to a younger generation of Haitians inside of Haiti and outside of it?

That’s such a tough question to answer. I don’t know if I’m arrogant enough to assume that our film offers anything to anyone. But I will hope that the film itself lessens our historical amnesia, awakens us to this idea that we can only be rescued by some benevolent force outside ourselves. I also hope the film broadens their perception around Haitian immigration and why it’s happening and not to fall victim to the usual and incomplete narratives about how Haiti has arrived to the place it’s at now. 

What’s next for you and your team? 

I know Hans, the producer, is raising funds for his film NWA and I’m quite excited about that. I had a slight hand in the direction of the story. 

Me and James are in the process of shooting a feature, an anthology about Queens that is 25 percent complete. It’s an Homage to Queens and its immigrant communities. Queens is the most diverse place in the entire world. More languages are spoken in Queens than anywhere else in the world. I grew up in Queens, so did James so we thought it’s an interesting project to make.

Feature photo credit: The Forgotten Occupation