Martha Jean-Claude

SIMPARELE is history interpreted through people's art. The film synthesizes the primary forms through which the Haitian people have expressed themselves in the centuries since the island's colonization by the French and the massive importation of African slaves to fuel its plantation economy. It is a composite of dance, theatrical tableaux, poetry, song, folk painting, legend and religious ritual. SIMPARELE acknowledges the powerful role which Afro-Haitian culture has played in these people's political struggle as both repository for people's history and the raw material from which that history can be reconstructed and transformed.

Pedro, a young black man born into a family of Haitians who emigrated to Cuba, returns to his town and notes the changes that the new times have brought.