Alain Martin

Alain Martin- Award-winning documentary filmmaker

Feel that where one is from is where one feels most at home, not necessarily where one was born and grew up.

I’m from Jacmel, the five boroughs of New York City, and Bergenfield, New Jersey, although I was born in a hospital in the hills of Port-au-Prince.
Jacmel is where I spent my formative years, where I discovered literature and mindless, shoot-em-up action films that my siblings and I would recreate in our backyard with paper guns.

New York is where I came of age, where I stumbled upon Malcolm X and DuBois and was introduced to the cinema of Spike Lee, John Singleton, and Quentin Tarantino. I realized that filmmaking wasn’t just about blowing things up and people being shot. At last, New Jersey is where I spent my early twenties, where I flirted with cinema and literature, where I attended William Paterson University and majored in film, took an elective on Haitian History, and learned of the brutal and forgotten US Occupation of Haiti. The teacher who realized I was studying film hinted that I should seriously consider giving this subject of the occupation a documentary treatment.