Arnold Antonin
A man of diverse careers, Arnold Antonin is known both inside and outside Haiti for his social, political and cultural commitment.
Born Celesti Corbanese in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1942, Arnold Antonin is a film director and a university professor who also organizes debates and heads a cultural center.
[2] A man of diverse careers, Arnold Antonin is known both at home and abroad for his social, political, and cultural commitment.
[3] In 1975 he directed the film Haiti, The way to Freedom (Ayiti, men chimin Libete) a documentary critical of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship which was shown around the world.
Also in 1986, Arnold Antonin constructed the Centre Pétion-Bolivar, a nonprofit educational foundation based in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.
The Centre Pétion Bolivar closed in March, 2020, after 34 years due to financial constraints which were worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.
1975: Directs Ayiti, men chimen libète, a film in which he tours the world as part of the mobilization against the Duvalier dictatorship.
2002: Honored at the Cannes Film Festival for his body of work and for his documentary Courage de femmes, as part of the Djibril Diop Mambety Prize.
2009: At the Fespaco awards in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Arnold Antonin presented his documentary Jacques Roumain: la Passion d'un Pays.
In 1976 he won a prize at the Francophone FiFEF Festival in New Orleans for Naive Art and Repression in Haiti In 1980, his movie "Un Tonton Macoute peut-il être un poète?"
[12] In 1982 Antonin received a special mention at the Mérida Cine Festival for "Un Tonton Macoute peut-il être un poète?".
It is called Matériel pour une préhistoire du cinéma haïtien (Material for a prehistory of Haitian cinema).
In 1983 he received another special mention for his role as a jury at the International Festival of the New Latin American Cinema of Havana for "Haiti, the path of freedom."
[14] He has been a member of several international juries for films in Havana, Caribbean Images, Namur, Ouagadougou Fespaco, Oaxaca México, Bogota, Sugar (Bolivia).
