A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
November 1, 2013
Original Title:
Ayiti Toma
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
It sometimes seems that everything to be said about Haiti has already been said. The global media has released countless reports, documentaries and interviews. Despite the apparent saturation, in this film Joseph Hillel succeeds in taking a broad yet unique look at the ostensibly well-known country. His approach is simple: letting Haitians speak for themselves and increasing the number of points of view on the record. Sociologists, historians, street urchins and Vodou priests all have their say, and all share the same desire to show off the diversity and richness of a people too often subject to outsiders’ harsh judgment. Rather than indulging in simple idealization, AYITI TOMA explores the complexity of the many challenges still facing a unique people whose culture and history are as magical as they are dark.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.