The Ann Arbor Black Film Festival presents A Look At Our Influence. The Michigan premiere of The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti.

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The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti (Haiti 2023)

Directed by Alain Martin

The documentary opens with Filmmaker Alain Martin reading a letter to his deceased grandfather. In that letter’s opening, the filmmaker recalls a morose conversation between his grandfather and another familiar member in which they bemoan the chronic troubles of their country, Haiti. They find themselves desperately hoping for an American intervention, seeing it as the only solution for their ravaged nation. Alain reminds his grandfather that the United States had already occupied Haiti and only left it more impoverished. As the letter continues, the brutal decades of the Occupation come to light, betraying the complicated history of a people who, a century ago, looked to the United States for guidance only to find themselves enmeshed in violent clashes of of race, culture and class, resulting in the wholesale theft of their homeland.