| "I became a journalist. I am an agronomist."
It is a tragedy of almost Shakespearean dimensions whose protagonist meets an untimely death: seven bullets at the hands of an unknown assassin. It is a labor of love that has taken Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) nearly a decade to complete. The Agronomist, Demme's much-anticipated documentary about Haiti's most famous journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, is the story of the Haitian people told through the eyes of Dominique, a farming expert who became an agent for change in his Caribbean homeland before being shot to death on April 3, 2000 in his radio station's courtyard. The movie will be screened Sunday at the Miami International Film Festival. With the help of the microphone and his ''unquenchable faith as a militant for true change,'' as he once put it, Dominique spent most of his 69 years speaking out against those whom he believed were destroying his beloved country: presidents, militias, military, the United States. ''I am not a journalist,'' Dominique says during his first sit-down interview with Demme, July 12, 1993. ``I became a journalist. I am an agronomist.'' One of two films at this year's Miami International Film Festival that explicitly addresses freedom of the press -- the other being the Brazilian film, Something in the Air -- The Agronomist was born in Demme's desire to capture on reel the Haitian people's perpetual, and often elusive, struggle for democracy. What has emerged through borrowed footage, black-and-white photographs and Demme's candid, first-person interviews with Dominique and Michele Montas, his widow, is a powerful story about one man's quest against two dictatorships, military coups and a democratically elected government to give voice to the Haitian people. In a nation where radio is the preferred medium, Dominique was the most recognizable journalist, and his Port-au-Prince station, Radio Haiti Inter, was both revolutionary and independent. He bought the station in 1971 and renamed it Radio Haiti Inter, after joining it as a reporter in the late 1960s. The first to systematically broadcast news to Haitians in Creole, the language of the majority of the population, Dominique became a friend of the poor and an enemy of the state. Twice, he and his wife were forced into exile; first in 1980 by Haiti's President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier, and then in 1991 by a military coup that ousted Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. ''A very, very, risky business,'' Dominique says in the film about broadcast journalism. ``I tried to introduce Kreyol. I tried to introduce information. Risky business.'' During that first interview, Dominique attempts to put the risks into perspective when Demme, a graduate of Southwest Miami High, asks whether he had any doubts his station -- destroyed during the 1991 coup -- would return to the air. ''Not a shadow of a doubt,'' Dominique says. ``You cannot kill the truth. You cannot kill justice. You cannot kill what we are fighting for. Participation of the citizen throughout the country . . . You cannot kill that.'' But six years after Dominique and Montas returned from exile, someone did try to silence the voice of Radio Haiti Inter. AMBUSHEDOn April 3, 2000, Dominique and a security guard were shot to death in a hail of bullets as Dominique entered the station, touching off violence and national mourning. Footage of Dominique's covered-up, bullet-riddled body being placed in the back of an ambulance is captured in the film as are images from his funeral and of his ashes being scattered in the Artibonite Valley, home of the Haitian peasants he championed.Nearly three years after his death, Dominique's killers remain on the loose. Despite pressure from national and international human rights and journalists' groups to find justice, no trial has occured. The investigation has been hampered by delays and obstacles including the resignation of an investigative judge, who fled to South Florida, and the refusal of the Haitian Senate to lift immunity for a powerful senator and Aristide supporter, Dany Toussaint, named by the judge as a suspect. Toussaint has said he's innocent. Late last year, the Paris-based media watchdog group, Reporters Without Borders, called on the Haitian government to protect key people in the investigation, including the current judge, who has yet to issue his report. The request came after a gunman killed a security guard outside Montas' home. Haitian investigators have said they are unsure whether the shooting was an attempt to kill Montas, who has been crusading to bring her husband's killer to justice. Following Sunday's screening, Montas will receive a free-speech award from People for the American Way Foundation.
CELEBS' HELPINGDemme, who befriended Dominique and Montas during the filming, has launched his own campaign to find justice. He has persuaded dozens of Hollywood luminaries to join his letter-writing campaign demanding action from the Haitian government.''For me the film is just one more way of keeping Jean's story alive, and hopefully keeping the quest for justice alive,'' says Demme, who views the film as a work in progress. ``There have been so many, so many good people killed in Haiti while struggling for democracy. . . . Jean seems the closest; the easiest one to find justice for.'' Dominique's death still haunts him. ''The death of Jean is a tragedy unto itself,'' says Demme. ``Here is someone who was able to survive two Duvaliers, but couldn't survive the changes that occured since then. Under a democracy, Haiti couldn't protect Jean after Duvalier.'' The irony is not lost on many in South Florida's Haitian community who are being invited to see the film and to participate in a panel discussion by People for the American Way Foundation about the role of free radio. ''It is the greatest of ironies that Jean Dominique would have survived all that he had, only to fall under Aristide's watch,'' said Gepsie Metellus, a Haitian-American activist and executive director of Sant La Haitian Community Center in Little Haiti. ``This is a man whose dream you can't kill; a legacy you can't kill.'' Metellus concedes some will see the film as a political indictment of the failings of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, others will see it for what Demme intended: Not a whodunnit, but a living testament to a man who championed democracy. Dina Paul Parks, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights, who has seen the film, says Demme's personal respect and admiration for Dominique and Montas come across clearly. While the film is plainly personal, Dominique's story, says Paul Parks, is ``a marquee case about what the Aristide government is willing to do regarding human rights violations, regarding political violence and assassinations and impunity.'' Said Demme: ``[It's] a film that celebrates the life of a great, great human being; two great human beings because now it's a portrait of Michele.'' Still, the political implications are not diminished. Toward the end of the film, Demme has included a fiery speech Dominique gave on the air about Toussaint after he refused to allow the senator's supporters from going on Radio Haiti Inter. Demme also includes an interview Dominique did with Aristide in which Dominique questions the president about the corruption that exists within his government, and its acceptance by certain member of Aristide's Lavalas party.
Toward the end of the film, the audience hears the same message that it heard at the beginning. It's Dominique, repeating the same words he spoke every morning on Radio Haiti Inter: _______________ |