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The Art of Haiti

The Art of Haiti is a 28 minute 16mm award winning film about the unschooled painters of Haiti who had created a dynamic art movement documenting the everyday life, history, and culture of their country and consequently achieving international praise and recognition. The film delves into the roots of Haitian art and also explores the uneasy co-existence of Christian and Vodoun beliefs through detailed retrospectives of the artists influenced by the religion. The documentary serves as a permanent record of the beautiful murals of the Cathedral St Trinite in Port-au-Prince filmed years before the church was destroyed during the earthquake of 2010. Photos documenting the destruction are included in the film. The Art of Haiti has received 3 awards from the Chicago International Film Festival including an award from the French Ministry of External Relations. Copyright 1982, 2014 Mark Mamalakis

  • Mark Mamalakis
    Director
    Subway
  • Mark Mamalakis
    Writer
  • Mark Mamalakis
    Producer
    Portrait of a Filmmaker
  • Philome Obin, Rigaud Benoit
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Genres:
    Art History
  • Runtime:
    28 minutes 35 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 2, 2014
  • Production Budget:
    22,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Haiti
  • Language:
    English, French
  • Shooting Format:
    16mm film
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4X3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Chicago International Film Festival
    Chicago, Il.
    October 10, 1982
    Silver Plaque Award, French Cultural Services Award
  • Harlem International Film Festival
    New York City
    September 14, 2014
    New York City
Director Biography - Mark Mamalakis

Mark Mamalakis is an award winning filmmaker based in Chicago. He holds a BA in Film from Columbia College, Chicago and an MA in Media from the University of Illinois at Chicago where he focused on ethnographic filmmaking. He was also a student in the Anthropological Film class taught by Jean Rouch at Harvard University in 1981.

Mark’s experimental films, Subway and Portrait of a Filmmaker, have received six festival awards and his documentary, The Art of Haiti, received three awards from the Chicago International Film Festival. Both films are in MOMA’s Circulating Film Library.

Mark received a grant in cinema from the French Ministry of External Relations enabling him to develop projects in France for seven months. He was awarded an NEA Regional Fellowship as well as grants from the Illinois Humanities Council, the Illinois Arts Council and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. He is currently completing documentaries about the Chicago Stockyards, the Day of the Dead, the Mexican painter Alejandro Romero and a fiction screenplay titled The Labyrinth.

In addition to his filmmaking, Mark has worked as location manager/location scout for directors Costa Gavras, Michael Mann, Olivier Assayas, and Steven Soderbergh.

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