It’s been 5 years since Shadow & Act first alerted you to Philippe Niang’s Toussaint Louverture film – a 180-minute miniseries made for French television; since then, the film has played at a number of international film festivals (including a handful here in the USA), but unfortunately, still not widely enough, and it still hasn’t received a proper release in the USA.
As of right now, it’s only available on DVD in France (Region-2), in its original language, and (seemingly) without English subtitles. Resellers on Amazon are selling the two-disc for about $80. So for those who understand French, and also own DVD players that can play Region 2 discs, Amazon resellers are your best bet right now.
No American distributor has picked up “Toussaint Louverture” yet, and there’s no obvious sign that there’s any interest in it, despite the fact that there’s most certainly an audience for it on this side of the Atlantic. It’s really the first film of this magnitude (budget and scale, etc) on Louverture that’s been made, and it’s unfortunate that much of the world still can’t see it!
It’s a story that really hasn’t been told on film in the USA, at the epic scale that it deserves. It’s a story that features black people in revolt and in control of their own destinies, absent of any white inspiration or *savior*, as is often the case in films of this nature. Black American audiences are anxious to see narratives like that on screen – equal to the kind of excitement fanboys display over trailers for the next superhero blockbuster movie. In fact, one can argue that there’s a significant enough audience around the globe who are hungry for a film (a good film) made on this particular subject.
So won’t it behoove some Hollywood studio executive to investigate the possibilities here? Or is it in fact a lie that Hollywood is motivated strictly by profit, and there are other unspoken rules that influence decision makers, and thus a story that highlights a monumental accomplishment by black people, absent of a white hero on horseback, just isn’t of interest to the predominantly white-controlled industry? And further, does that then mean that the so-called black Hollywood elite should take charge and instead finance and produce the film themselves (or pick up Niang’s film and make it available to USA audiences, even if it’s only on DVD), rather than wait for the studios to do so?
It’s hard to believe that a wonderful opportunity is being completely overlooked here, and the person or people who finally decide to take the risk will be well-rewarded for doing so.
Danny Glover has been trying for about 20 years to bring the Louverture story to the big screen, but so far he hasn’t been successful, with stops and starts along the way. And it doesn’t look like his project will ever get the backing it needs. But we can only hope.
As for Niang’s 180-minute French miniseries on the famed Haitian revolutionary, which stars Jimmy Jean-Louis, it’s the kind of seemingly obscure foreign work that a streaming platform like Netflix would pick up, or even Amazon Prime, or Hulu. So maybe pressure can be applied on that front.
In the meantime, those in Los Angeles will be glad to know that the 25th Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) will screen the entire 180-minute series at its next event, which kicks off in a few days, on February 9, running through the 20th. It’s set to screen twice: Saturday, February 11, starting at 8:30pm; and Sunday, February 19, starting at 2pm. Advance tickets are currently available for purchase here.
PAFF actually marked the miniseries’ USA premiere in 2012, and as the festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, it’s bringing back some of its *greatest hits* like “Toussaint Louverture.”
Jimmy Jean-Louis stars in the miniseries as Louverture; he’s joined by French actresses Aïssa Maïga as Toussaint’s wife, Suzanne, and Sonia Rolland as Marie-Eugénie Sonthonax, wife of abolitionist L.F. Sonthonax.
Watch a trailer for “Toussaint Louverture” below:
