Synopsis

The Road to Fondwa tells the story of a rural Haitian community poised to change the future of Haiti one university student at a time.

When Haiti is not forgotten or ignored, it is seen through a tinted lens. The small, impoverished nation shares an island with the Dominican Republic just 500 miles from the shores of Miami. It is Haiti's proximity that brings it into our national conscience in short, periodic bursts. When a dictator is overthrown, a group of "boat people" is lost at sea, or a coup is staged, it gets our attention. Reporters rush to the scene, horrific tales are told, and we feel sympathy — or is it pity? And then, as quickly as the news cycle churns, the moment disappears.

From the very beginning of the film, it is clear that The Road to Fondwa does not follow this pattern. The first interview introduces Sandelwi, a farmer and a mystic, riding on top of a bus that speeds around the treacherous curves of the mountain road to Port-au-Prince, mindless of the precipitous drop to the valley below. "When you're in Haiti, I consider you Haitian," he says. "It's up to us, we have to put our heads together to do development."

From that point on, there is no turning back. It becomes evident that The Road to Fondwa is not a one-way street, but a conduit between two very different, yet intricately connected nations.

The film was shot in 2006, premiered in 2008 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, and screened across the United States. This site marks twenty years since the filming — the original 37-minute film, Rebecca Sherman's photographs of Fondwa, and a retrospective drawn from the footage that has been waiting on tape ever since.