Broken Stones
Writer/Director: Guetty Felin
Completed 2012
Broken Stones chronicles a community who refuse to abandon the cathedral of Port-au-Prince, Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
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The oldest neighborhood of the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Quartier Cathédrale (Cathedral Quarter) was the most devastated sector in the city. It is also where the bulk of Broken Stones was shot. With its erected columns and open air, the ruins of the cathedral resembles an amphitheater where the daily realities of Haitian life unfolds. Midst the vestige of what was once the most beautiful cathedrals in the entire Caribbean, children play, women pray, some carry pails and jugs of water from the nearby tap, a white man dressed in black hooded priest garb appears out of nowhere, followed by a cameraman, foreign missionaries snap pictures as they pray for lost souls in a house of worship that does not belong to them, men and women roam almost aimlessly in this post-apocalyptic decor. These images are among the impressionist moments interwoven into the narrative fabric of this captivating documentary.
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Beautifully photographed mixing cinema vérité and observational documentary style, this film is personal and yet endearingly political. Haiti, like it has rarely been shown.
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