Saturday, September 20, 2008

Montreal Haitian Film Festival/Voodoo

I was very lucky to be invited to one of the exibitions part of the 4th annual Montreal Haitian Film Festival. This festivals main purpose is to show films from here and abroad that have to do with Haiti in some way or another. Many of the films are independant and stuff that dosn't hit the big screen. They also have a theme, and the theme this year was Voodoo(in Qc city it was modern slavery I beleive.)

The purpose of the exibition was to dismantle the stereotypes associated with Voodoo and show the true religeon. Although im far from an expert, i'll try and give a brief description of Voodoo.

The age of the religeon is probably as old as Africa itself. Most of the slaves that where brought to the west, where from west Africa where the religeon is still predominent today. In 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He opened plantations of sugar, coffee, and tobbacco to name a few. Ofcourse African slaves where used to harvest these plantations. As part of the colony's code, all slaves where to be baptized as Christians. This made a lot of changes in their religeon. They incorporated many elements of the Catholic faith into their religeon, such as saints names. The Catholic saints names became the name of the loas(spirits) The original inhabitants of the country where Arawak Indians who also practised their own religeon. This mixed with the Haitians Voodoo.

All of this makes Voodoo what it is today. Unfortunetly, it is an extremely misunderstood religeon which is highly stereotyped.




Voodoo alter

1 comment:

Nikki said...

Really cool. I had class this morning, then work, now off to some more class :S but I am definitely going to read the rest of your blog and respond to your email tomorrow! I am really excited to read more :)