ella turenne

http://jstheater.blogspot.com/2007/06/ramblings-ella-turennes-woodshed.html

Ramblings + Ella Turenne's Woodshed + Toussaint + Elections Have Consequences

Blogging, slogging. Summer's bearish days haven't arrived yet, and every sentence already requires a battery charge. Well, every sentence I type on this blog. The quarter ends this week, and then I and the rest of the faculty will be bidding a number of undergraduates and graduate students farewell and best wishes on their futures. I'll save my congratulations for next week, but as with every year, I will be sad to see so many of the students depart, though I am always excited about the various paths they take or find themselves on once they leave the academic groves.

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From former students to former colleagues: one of my friends and former colleagues, the multitalented Ella Turenne, will be premiering her first film, Woodshed, at the Hollywood Black Film Festival. She was discussing making films back when we worked side by side about seven years ago, and has been working on this film with several of her close friends for five years. (I still walk around in the Soulfinite T-shirts she created back then.) Now it's done and will finally hit the big screen. Ella is one of those people who makes things happen; when I met her she was painting, writing and performing her poetry with the Blackout Collective, thinking about acting, and contemplating graduate school. She has since completed one grad degree, appeared in a play in NYC, and published a commemorative anthology in 2004 to mark the 200th anniversary of Haiti's independence (she's Haitian-American). Somehow, amidst all of these activities, she managed to complete her film, and when she's not teaching, she runs a program at a New York-area university. As one of my good friends always says, "amazing!" Congratulations, Ella, and I hope to catch the film as it makes its way around the country. If you are in Los Angeles this weekend, however, you'll be able to catch its debut.

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Ella and I discussed the recent news that Danny Glover had received $18 million from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to make a film about Toussaint L'Ouverture. The news of Chávez's support impressed me, because a L'Ouverture film--and feature films in general about the Haitian Revolution--is long overdue, and independent Haiti provided Simon Bolívar, Chávez's avatar, with some of the resources he needed to liberate Gran Colombia. I told Ella that I'd checked out the film's IMDb.com page, and was surprised to see there did not appear to be many Haitians or Haitian-Americans involved with the film. Neither of the film's writers appear to be Haitian or Haitian-American, and none of the high-profile (and highly talented) Hollywood actors, like Don Cheadle, Angela Bassett, Mos Def, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who are "rumored" to be in the film, are either. I also heard that it will not be filmed in Haiti or the neighboring Dominican Republic, but in Venezuela. I understand the problems of filming in Haiti (or DR, for that matter, where many, many Haitians live), but just think of the jobs (even temporary) that such a production would provide. But then again, who knows how things might turn out. There are many notable scholars of the Haitian Revolution (including several colleagues of mine), as well as Haitian and Haitian-American actors, writers, musicians, and so forth, so I hope some (many) of them will be part of this film as it develops.