Haiti: The Way to Freedom

The Afterlives of Sugar brings together films that consider the sugar economy not just as an industry but as a foundational structure of colonial modernity. Moving between Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this series reveals the violence of the plantation not as a relic of the past, but as a structure whose afterlives continue to shape the present. 

In Haiti: The Way to Freedom (1973), Arnold Antonin combines archival material and text with the testimonies of Haitian political organisers to position the country’s revolutionary history as central to global anti-colonial struggle. Often regarded as the first Haitian feature-length documentary, the film opens with the arrival of Christopher Columbus to Hispaniola in 1492 and traces a thread of political upheaval through the Revolution of 1791, along the foundation of the first Black Republic and the peasant revolts, to the beginning of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship.   

Antonin’s documentary provides crucial historical context for understanding the political afterlives of the Caribbean plantation economy. Haiti’s revolution represented a profound rupture in the colonial order, destabilising the global system of plantation slavery and becoming a lasting symbol of Black self-determination. Its legacy continues to shape the region’s political imaginaries today.

Doors open at 2.30pm; event starts at 3pm and ends at 5pm.

Image credit: still from Haiti: The Way to Freedom, 1973, Arnold Antonin.