Kanaval, by Henri Pardo | Crossing the continent

Drawing on the memories of his family, Henri Pardo tells the story of the Haitian diaspora through the eyes of a young boy who fled with his mother from Duvalierism in Kanavalhis first feature-length fiction film.

Born in Edmunston, New Brunswick, to Haitian parents who fled the Duvalier dictatorship, actor and director Henri Pardo (Dear Jackie, Afro Canada) witnessed the post-traumatic shock experienced by his family members. For his first fiction feature film, Kanavalit therefore seemed natural to him to draw on the memories of his family, to whom he owes his knowledge and his love for the culture of his ancestors.

This is how he tells the story of Rico (Rayan Dieudonné, who arrived via Roxham Road in 2018, as told by Rima Elkouri in From Roxham Road to the red carpet^⁠1) who, with her mother Erzulie (Penande Estime, revealed by the series After the flood, by Mara Joly), fled Jacmel in 1975 to head north. On this cold planet that is Canada in the eyes of the 9-year-old child, Rico and his mother will be warmly welcomed by two extraterrestrials, Cécile (Claire Jacques) and Albert (Martin Dubreuil).

Read the column “From Roxham Road to the Red Carpet”

“I’m 54 years old, I’m a local guy, I don’t have time to read everything that’s out there. So I let myself go with the memories, the madness, the imagination. With producer Éric Idriss Kanago, we took a research trip to Jacmel because I wanted to validate certain things. Walking through the streets of Jacmel, I found the house I had drawn. »

During his stay, Henri Pardo met hougans (voodoo priests), poets and makers of papier-mâché masks to whom he asked questions about Haitian culture and made them read what he had written. Everyone believed that he was born in Jacmel even though it was the first time he set foot there.

I didn’t think I knew so much about my culture.

Henri Pardo, director

In Jacmel, where the Day of the Dead was being celebrated, the filmmaker was able to discover a character from Haitian folklore, the rope thrower, who would inspire Kana (Tyler Epassy). Her body and face coated with cane syrup and charcoal, her head decorated with horns, Kana will become Rico’s imaginary friend. It was originally supposed to be a dragon hiding in the closet; Fortunately, a friend of the director reminded him that dragons did not exist in Haitian culture.

“In my opinion, Kana is not an imaginary friend, but a realistic and wonderful character who accompanies Rico when he encounters difficulties. In the history of carnival, the figure of the rope thrower has been exaggerated. We said to ourselves that white people were afraid of black people, we were going to really scare them, we were going to be more Negro than Negro, we were going to put horns on our heads and that the ropes around our wrists were going to represent the chains that the slaves have broken. »

Mother courage and protective goddess

Although more discreet than that of Rico, the character of the mother, who teaches French, carries an important symbolic dimension. In fact, through the character of Erzulie, his grandmother’s first name, Henri Pardo celebrates the Creole expression potomitan, which means “family support”, a role often played by the mother, and the warrior goddess Erzulie Dantor.

Since the revolution of 1791, women have been at the center of everything, from education, to family, to culture. Without saying it, their feminism has always been present and very collaborative (…). A feminist before her time, the goddess Erzulie defended women, children and lesbians.

Henri Pardo, director

“Voodoo is a religion of healing and unification; the gods do not judge, but are companions with whom we discuss when we are at the crossroads. When the Americans arrived in 1915, they demonized voodoo. »

Despite the presence of Kana, Erzulie and a moose who speaks Creole (voice of Fayolle Jean Jr.) in the heart of the boreal forest, Henri Pardo denies having deliberately borrowed from magical realism and the marvelous.

“I came across these terms long after I started writing. It was on set, with cinematographer Glauco Bermudez, that we realized that this is what we were doing. We were so in tune with our environment and the story that it was self-evident. »

In Haitian culture, there are incredible nuances that I am still discovering. It seems that everything is juxtaposed between history, social problems, the development of culture. So we had fun putting one on top of the other and it gave that effect.

Henri Pardo, director

However, the nods to science fiction in this story told from a child’s perspective were entirely intentional: “I am a science fiction lover; it allows me not only to escape, but to remake the world, to study our world, as the series did Star Trek And Cosmos 1999, which were projections of Cold War, nuclear issues. Doing Kanaval, I noticed that in Haiti, we live our culture everywhere and here, in a little box we call television. When Rico arrives from the carnival and finds himself in a small brown apartment in Chicago, TV becomes for him an opening to the world, a source of imagination. »

Both a celebration of Haitian culture and a duty to remember, Kanaval is intended, according to Henri Pardo, to be a unifying film, which talks about encounters, which speaks to the child in us. And this, despite the trauma of exile and the ordinary racism that he addresses without disguise.

“In Canada, racism is not like in the United States, it is sneaky. We see that we represent 3.5% of the population in Canada, but that the percentage is increasing in penitentiaries. There is frustration, particularly among educated migrants, who have everything they need to integrate quickly. I try not to spend too much time on this; when I make a film, I want to make sure that the audience has hope even if there is harshness. My challenge with Kanaval, is to say that we must keep our Haitian heart, no matter what. »

In theaters May 3