 |
Nicolas Rossier | |
|---|---|
 Nicolas Rossier | |
| Born | Zurich, Switzerland |
| Occupation | Journalist, film director |
Nicolas Rossier is an American filmmaker and reporter best known for his biographical documentaries of the former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and South African Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient (together with Nelson Mandela) F.W. de Klerk.
Rossier was the first journalist to interview ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after the 2004 Haitian coup d'état, with excerpts of this interview being featured in the documentary Aristide and the Endless Revolution . The film has been called "vital" by Variety [1] and "taut, well-balanced and insightful" by the New York Times. [2] Rossier was also the last journalist to interview Aristide before he was allowed to return to Haiti in 2010. [3] His follow-up film, American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein , profiling the life and work of the controversial Jewish academic and author, received many positive reviews. [4]
His work has aired on television networks around the world including PBS, Al Jazeera English, and the Hallmark Channel and leading international venues such as the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, IDFA in Amsterdam, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Hot Docs. [5] His work has been praised by industry peers such as Michael Moore, [6] Albert Maysles [7] and Mark Achbar. [8] He has collaborated with many notable professionals in the industry, among them veteran CBC News reporter David Ridgen [9] and Emmy Award-winning producer Jon Alpert. [10]
Rossier's first film, Life is a Dream: a Street Poet in New York was released in 2000 and won him the Audience Award at the New York Independent Film Festival. He followed up with Brothers and Others in 2003 which exposed the impact and backlash of the events of 9/11 on Arab and Muslim communities within the United States which aired primetime on the Hallmark Channel several times.
Nicolas Rossier was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland. He pursued a career in the financial sector in Europe before relocating to New York City in 1998 to transition into a career in film and journalism. He has studied at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, the School of Visual Arts and the New York Film Academy. He works and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Aristide and the Endless Revolution took the Best Documentary prize at the Pan-African Film Festival and was selected for the Amnesty International Doen Award at IDFA in Amsterdam. American Radical won the Audience Choice award at IFP/Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Cinema Politica Audience Award, the Jean Renoir Award for Best Anti- War Film and was named one of the 'top ten best political documentaries' by Screen Junkies.In June 2010, American Radical was invited to join the official collection of the Oscars library. In 2012, his short documentary ONE BREATH about free diver champion William Trubridge was voted best original reporting by CNN .
Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Salesian priest and politician who became Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, Aristide was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies to become a priest. He became a focal point for the pro-democracy movement first under Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and then under the military transition regime which followed. He won the 1990–91 Haitian general election, with 67% of the vote. As a priest, he taught liberation theology and, as a president, he attempted to normalize Afro-Creole culture, including Vodou religion, in Haiti.
A coup d'état in Haiti on 29 February 2004, following several weeks of conflict, resulted in the removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office. On 5 February 2004, a rebel group, called the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti, took control of Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaïves. By 22 February, the rebels had captured Haiti's second-largest city, Cap-Haïtien and were besieging the capital, Port-au-Prince by the end of February. On the morning of 29 February, Aristide resigned under controversial circumstances and was flown from Haiti by U.S. military/security personnel, preventing him from finishing his second term He went into exile, being flown directly to the Central African Republic, before eventually settling in South Africa.
Jean Léopold Dominique was a Haitian journalist and noted activist for human rights and democracy in Haiti. His station, Radio Haiti-Inter, was the first to broadcast news, investigative reporting, and political analysis in Haitian Creole, the language spoken by most Haitian people. On 3 April 2000 he was assassinated as he arrived for work at Radio Haiti-Inter. An extensive though turbulent investigation failed to officially identify and bring to justice the primary perpetrators, who remain at large.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam. Over a period of twelve days, it has screened more than 300 films and sold more than 250,000 tickets. Visitors to the festival have increased from 65,000 in 2000 to 285,000 in 2018.
Kevin Pina is an American journalist, filmmaker and educator. Pina also serves as a Country Expert on Haiti for the Varieties of Democracy project sponsored by the University of Notre Dame Center for Research Computing, the University of Gothenburg Department of Political Science, and the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
Randall Robinson is an African-American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of TransAfrica. He is known particularly for his impassioned opposition to apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Due to his frustration with American society, Robinson emigrated to St. Kitts in 2001.
Cité Soleil is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty. The area is generally regarded as one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the Western Hemisphere and it is one of the biggest slums in the Northern Hemisphere. The area has virtually no sewers and has a poorly maintained open canal system that serves as its sewage system, few formal businesses but many local commercial activities and enterprises, sporadic but largely unpaid for electricity, a few hospitals, and two government schools, Lycee Nationale de Cité Soleil, and Ecole Nationale de Cité Soleil. For several years until 2007, the area was ruled by a number of gangs, each controlling their own sectors. But government control was reestablished after a series of operations in early 2007 by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) with the participation of the local population.
The Staircase is a 2004 French-produced, English-language documentary television miniseries directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade about the trial of Michael Peterson, convicted of murdering his wife, Kathleen Peterson.
Michel Joseph Martelly is a Haitian musician and politician who was the President of Haiti from May 2011 until February 2016. He is one of Haiti's best-known musicians for over a decade, going by the stage name Sweet Micky. For business and musical reasons, Martelly has moved a number of times between the United States and Haiti. When travelling to the United States, Martelly mostly stays in Florida. After his presidency, Martelly returned to his former band and sang a carnival méringue entitled "Bal Bannan nan", as a mocking response to Liliane Pierre Paul, a famous Haitian female journalist in Port-au-Prince.
William Trubridge is a New Zealand world champion and world record holding freediver.
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D. in political science at Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.
Mario Joseph is a Haitian human rights lawyer. Since 1996, he has led the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince, which represents political prisoners, impoverished communities, and victims of political violence. In 2006, The New York Times called Joseph "Haiti's most prominent human rights lawyer".
David Ridgen is an independent Canadian filmmaker born in Stratford, Ontario. He has worked for CBC Television, MSNBC, NPR, TVOntario and others. He is currently the writer, producer and host of CBC Radio’s true-crime podcast series, Someone Knows Something and The Next Call.
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein is a 2009 documentary film about the life of the American academic Norman Finkelstein, directed and produced by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. The documentary features Finkelstein and several of his supporters and opponents, including Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz.
An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President is a book on the history of Haiti by Randall Robinson in 2008.
Brian Concannon, Jr. is a human rights lawyer and foreign policy advocate. He is the Executive Director of Project Blueprint, which works for a human rights-based US foreign policy by bringing the perspectives of people abroad impacted by US policies into policy discussions and advocacy. Concannon founded the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and was Executive Director from 2004-2019. Concannon also serves as a member of the Editorial Board of Health and Human Rights: An International Journal at the Harvard School of Public Health, and is a contributor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft blog. He is an alumnus of Boston College High School'81, as well as an Ignatius Award winner. He holds an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and JD from Georgetown Law. He is the recipient of the Wasserstein Public Interest Fellowship from Harvard Law School the Brandeis International Fellowship in Human Rights, Intervention, and International Law and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Canisius College. Brian has qualified as an expert witness on country conditions Haiti in over 40 cases in the U.S. and Canada, appearing on behalf of both applicants and the U.S. government.
Aristide and the Endless Revolution is a 2005 feature documentary directed and produced by Nicolas Rossier about former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the coup d'etat that ousted him from the country in 2004. Rossier was the first media professional to get exclusive access to Aristide while in exile and the resultant interview is featured in the film, as well as interviews with many experts on Haiti, including U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, noted economist Jeffrey Sachs and Aristide's lawyer Ira J. Kurzban.
Haiti–Venezuela relations are relations between Haiti and Venezuela. Venezuela has an embassy in Port-au-Prince, and Haiti has an embassy in Caracas.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a Haitian priest and president of Haiti.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)