NEWS

It’s not easy being LGBT in Haiti. While same sex activity was legalised in 1986, there are few legal protections for gay people, and harassment by the police using various other statutes is not unusual. Socially there are plenty of issues to, with the strongly Catholic nation having a very anti-gay bias.

That has now resulted in plans for the country’s first LGBT film festival being scrapped, following death threats and police pressure. Ultimately it was the authorities who ended prospects for the Massimadi festival – which has previously been held in Brussels and Montreal – going ahead. They have claimed though that it wasn’t blocked due to the threats against the organisers and participants, but more insidiously, Jean Danton Leger, commissioner of Port-au-Prince, claimed it was stopped to protect public morals. That means that while it was initially just postponed by the organisers, it’s now unlikely to be able to go ahead at all.

Charloe Jeudy from Kouraj, Haiti’s leading LGBT group, told Reuters, that those organising the festival, “Are very worried about the security of members of the community who live in this country. It’s a blow of intolerance.”

As well as the Commissioner, others had come out against the festival, including Haitian senator Jean Renel Senatus, who wrote on Facebook that Massimadi poses a “great danger” to Haitian families, as it “aims to promote homosexuality in our country”. Senatus has made ridding Haiti of homosexuality a bit of a mission, including wanting it banned from imported TV shows, such as Glee.

The hope was that the festival could raise awareness of homophobia in African and Caribbean communities, but instead it’s been a victim of homophobia before it could even take place.

Lee Daniels has had success directing the likes of Precious, The Paperboy and The Butler, as well as being the creator of TV’s Empire. However, he’s not the first person you might expect to get a movie about their life.

He feels differently though, and if handled well, he might just be right. It’s not just a standard biopic he’s hoping to make either, as Daniels wants it to be a musical. He tells Billboard, “My publicist will kill me, but I’m in talks about doing a musical film about my life. I’ve had a pretty interesting life. I’ve come from the projects. I’ve been homeless. It’ll have original music and sort of be like Fellini’s ‘8 1/2‘ or ‘All That Jazz.’”

8 1/2 was a loose musical take on Federico Fellini’s own life, while All That Jazz saw Bob Fosse looking at himself through a thinly fictionalised veil.

As well as being homeless and coming from a pretty deprived area, Daniels has also previously spoken about the difficulties of growing up African-American and gay, as well as how he, like many other gay men in the 1980s, watched many of his friends die of AIDS. He later had a problem with drugs (which he has suggested was partly due to his guilt over surviving when so few others did) and survived two heart attacks.

It’s very early days, and Daniels has had issues in the past with those backing his films pulling funding or getting cold feet, so he may struggle to get it off the ground. However, it could make for a potentially very interesting film if he does get it made.