by Kim Ives
November 24, 2004

(Haïti Progrès/Brooklyn,NY ) Madam Ti Zo is a warm and touching documentary about a century-old midwife in the spiny mountains above Jacmel, Haiti, who delivers, not just babies, but comfort and hope to her peasant neighbors.

She never had any trouble having babies herself, Madam Ti Zo explains over the extended opening sequence in which she delivers a baby girl in her dirt-floored rural clinic. She gave birth to some of her own 12 children while working in the fields. She would put the newborn in a basket and then “cut the umbilical cord when I got back home.”

She went on to be trained by doctors in a rural hospital and then began tending to peasants in Carrefour Penguin, on the Jacmel River, as midwife and “doktè fey” (herbal doctor) in 1957. In 2003, her methods are not much different than when she began. She uses a two-sided Gillette razor, dipped in an alcohol-filled jar-top, to trim umbilical cords.

With minimal narration and no music, Belle has crafted a tender portrait of this remarkable woman. Avoiding the usual pitfalls of exoticism, the film presents the harsh realities of peasant life with a matter-of-fact air, in part because Belle himself lives in the Haitian countryside outside Jacmel.
The film is the second in a series called “Pawòl Granmoun” (Words of the Elders) being produced by Belle and Katharine Kean, who directed many other Crowing Rooster Arts films including “Rezistans” and “Killing the Dream.”

Madam Ti Zo, born Madeleine Desrosiers, treats her patients with a gruff humor which delighted the audience at the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival in Manhattan, where the film made its North American premiere in November. After laboriously kneading a young mother’s belly to realign the low-riding child inside her, Madam Ti Zo told her the cost of the visit: 15 gourdes or about 40 cents. The mother didn’t have that much. “Well, maybe on the next visit,” Madam Ti Zo says.

Life doesn’t get much tougher than Madam Ti Zo’s. Her husband left her years ago and only four of her children are still alive. Her clinic, like the film, is populated almost exclusively by women. “I don’t deal with men,” she only half-jokingly responded to one question after the showing in New York, where she was visiting for the first time.

Madam Ti Zo sends patients she can’t treat to the local hospital but is confident about the superiority of her hands-on treatments and herbal remedies. “Aspirin comes from sweet meadow,” she knowledgeably explains, “and chloroquin from lilac.”

To do her job, she explains toward the film’s end, “you must be patient and loving.” These qualities, to the director’s credit, emanate from the film, which is dedicated to his recently departed mother, filmmaker Anne Belle.

Madam Ti Zo’s tenacity and wit, not to mention longevity, in the face of overwhelming hardship are inspirational, and Belle’s portrait is filled with reverence. But the film ends with a mild alarm. “I don’t have anyone who can continue this,” Madam Ti Zo laments. She hopes to pass on her wisdom to her 9-year-old great granddaughter, who we see helping at the clinic in the film’s final sequence.
We realize that, despite her spunk and stamina, Madam Ti Zo might not have time to train a protege, which leaves the viewer somewhat melancholy, if uplifted.

Madam Ti Zo, directed by David Belle, produced by Crowing Rooster Arts, 2004,

Caption: Madam Ti Zo and film director David Belle respond to questions after U.S. premiere of new film on her life.

Brooklyn:
December 5 Rally to Demand End to Killings and to U.N. Occupation in Haiti

November 24, 2004

(Haïti Progrès/Brooklyn,NY) The New York Haitian community and its U.S. supporters will rally at 5 p.m. on December 5 at the Klitgord Center Auditorium of the New York College of Technology at 285 Jay Street in Brooklyn to condemn the continuing wave of government repression in Haiti and to call for a return to constitutional government and an end to the United Nations military occupation of the country.
The event – entitled “Haiti at the Crossroads: What is to be Done?” – is being jointly organized by the Lavalas Family party and the National Popular Party (PPN), Haiti’s two largest parties, whose members in Haiti have been targeted for arrest and assassination by agents of the de facto Haitian government.
Among the speakers scheduled are Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, PPN secretary general Ben Dupuy, and Haiti’s constitutional secretary of state for Communications, Mario Dupuy. There will also be a special message to the rally from actor Danny Glover.
The acclaimed musical dance company, Troupe Makandal, will also perform.
There will be the premiere of two new videos at the event. One illustrates the accomplishments of the President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government before he was flown into exile by U.S. Marines on February 29, 2004. The other shows the fierce resistance of massive street demonstrations which warned the government to take action against the coup during the months in 2003 when it began unfolding.
“We are witnessing today in Haiti a repression as ruthless and arbitrary as that of the Duvalier dictatorships,” said Serge Lilavois of the Haiti Support Network (HSN), one of the groups helping to organize the rally. “George W. Bush supported President Aristide’s ouster. Now that he has won the U.S. presidential election, the Haitian community wants to know what path parties like the Lavalas Family and the PPN propose to end the crisis in Haiti.”
Both the Lavalas Family and the PPN will have representatives coming directly from Haiti for the December 5 event to give reports about the situation on the ground there.
The event is being organized with the support of Haitian radio stations as well as U.S.-based organizations like the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and the International Action Center (IAC). Admission to the event is $10.

Tickets, flyers and more information can be obtained from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition at (212) 533-0417, the Fanmi Lavalas at (203) 847-5487 or (917) 337-6702, Haïti Progrès newspaper (718) 434-8100, or IAC at (212) 633-6646.