by BERTIE MANDELBLATT

On April 24, the award-winning Royal Bonbon will open the 19th annual Journées du cinéma africain et créole of Vues d'Afrique 2003. The festival organizers have chosen well. This slow-moving and immensely powerful film represents an extraordinary engagement with Haitian history that highlights many crucial issues of the African diaspora - the legacies of European colonization, the centuries-old trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves who settled large parts of the New World, and the struggles for liberation that defined these settlements. Haiti is, famously, a unique case, being the first black republic borne of a successful slave revolt in history.

Royal Bonbon is a fabulously theatrical re-enactment of the immediate aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1804), centring on the figure of Henri Christophe, an ex-slave and one of the leaders of the Revolution who crowned himself King Henry I in 1811. In the film, a half-mad, babbling manual labourer nicknamed "le roi Chacha" drifts through the streets of contemporary Cap-Haïtien, calling himself Christophe, king of Haiti. Jeered and cursed at by the townspeople, he takes refuge in the forboding ruins of the Sans Souci palace, built by the real Henri Christophe. Thimotée, a young homeless boy in search of his father, follows him, and it is from his perspective that the film's events unfold. Soon more people gather at the palace, and as his namesake did, the new Henri Christophe creates a royal court for himself, renaming his decidedly proletarian entourage with elegant and fanciful names of the French aristocracy.

The scenes shot in the Sans Souci ruins are among the strongest in the film, capturing both the underlying grief and absurdity of the situation. There is an interminable and almost unbearably beautiful scene of "le roi Chacha" kissing an 18th-century white-stone statue of a woman in one of the palace gardens, literally embracing the fixed ideals of French republicanism. The insanity of this "reign" is contrasted with several dream-like scenes showing a contemporary reincarnation of Macandal promising to help Thimotée find his father. Macandal was the legendary leader of the maroons, escaped slaves who lived autonomously deep in the hills, outside of the slave system. The film follows the story of Henri Christophe to its historical end, leaving the audience wondering where indeed Thimotée will find his father in the Haiti of today.

Many of the 124 other films of the festival take similar themes of oppression and liberation as points of departure. Among the documentaries being featured, several from Algeria examine the roots of the violence tearing that country apart: Algérie, la vie toujours shows citizens trying to recuperate their city of Kabylie, while Algérie(s) documents the 15-year history of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the deaths of 150,000 Algerians. Frantz Fanon is a biographical documentary on the celebrated Martiniquan psychiatrist who worked in Algeria and theorized black alienation. In terms of fiction, Une minute de soleil en moins from Morocco has encountered opposition from the authorities there because of its depiction of female sexuality. Also from Algeria, Rachida deals with locally-organized terrorism. And from Chad, Abouna tells the story of two brothers, (again) in search of their father who has mysteriously disappeared.

The 19th annual Journées du cinéma africain et créole of Vues d'Afrique 2003 runs from April 25 to May 4. Info: 990-3201 or www.vuesdafrique.org

>> Movie Listings