Elena
(Elena)
Michèle Stephenson | Documentary
2018 | 30 minutes | United States, Dominican Republic
When the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, Elena becomes the face of the struggle against the opaque bureaucratic process and a racist, hostile society, to stay in a country built on the labor of her forefathers.
Synopsis
In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless.
Elena has lost her citizenship due to this ruling, and her family stands to lose their rightful access to legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don’t manage to get their documents on time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to stay in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers.
Director Michèle Stephenson’s documentary follows Elena and her family through their tribulations and small joys, as they fight to remain in the country they’ve called home for generations.
Reviews
"Elena is a proud celebration of Haitian heritage in the Dominican Republic." — Alonso Aguilar, Hyperallergic
"An intimate and engrossing portrait of how the specters of historical traumas haunt Dominicans of Haitian heritage, who are relegated to the fringes of social acceptance." — Haitian Times
"Elena exposes the immense mundanity of racist governance — and the exhaustion produced by navigating it — where exclusion is managed, more than anything, by bureaucracy and its gatekeepers. In doing so, it powerfully engages with the difficult question of how coloniality and its expression in anti-Black racism can be understood and challenged when they are reproduced largely in the absence of white people." — Larissa Andrea Johnson, Film Quarterly
"Elena spotlights one woman's fight against racism." — The New York Carib News
Citation
Main credits
Stephenson, Michèle (film director)
Stephenson, Michèle (screenwriter)
Stephenson, Michèle (film producer)
Brewster, Joe (film producer)
Other credits
Cinematography, Alfredo Alcántara [and 3 others]; editors, Clementina Martinelli, Jordan Kawai; music, Aquiles Navarro.
Citation
Cataloging
Pragda subjects
Activism
Afro-Latin Studies
Criminal Justice
Culture + Identity
History
Human Rights
International Relations
Latin American Studies
Migration Studies
Political Science
Race + Ethnicity
Sociology
Keywords
Clips
Festivals
BlackStar Film Festival - Jury Award, Best Short Documentary
Philadelphia Latino Film Festival - LOLA Award Honorable Mention
New Orleans International Film Festival
DOCNYC
Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival
Double Exposure Film Festival
DIRECTOR: Michèle Stephenson
NATIONALITY: United States, Dominican Republic
YEAR: 2018
GENRE: Documentary
LANGUAGE: Spanish; Haitian Creole; Other languages
COLOR / B&W: Color
GRADE LEVEL: High School, College, Adults
SUBTITLE/CC: AVAILABLE
AUDIO DESCRIPTION: NOT AVAILABLE
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