Guetty Felin

Guetty Felin
© DR
Film director, Producer, Screenwriter, Associate producer, Distributor
Principal country concerned : Column : Music, Cinema/tv, Literature

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and raised in New York, Guetty Felin is an award-winning, independent filmmaker. At the end of her College year abroad in Paris, Ms. Felin decided to prolong her stay to finish her cinema studies at the University of Paris, little did she know that she would end up staying for 20 years.

Ms. Felin is project author, director and producer of the award-winning documentary Broken Stones on self-recovery after the Haiti quake. She is currently in the development stage of her first-feature-length narrative A Rooster on the Fire Escape which relates the traumas of dictatorship that continues to haunt a family even in exile. A story of love and betrayal set in New York during the tumultuous 70s.

Through her company BelleMoon Productions and Releasing she just recently spearheaded a promotional tour for the release of TEY(Today) by French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis. As a result of the tour the film has been picked up by 8 theaters across the country and will be released in the first quarter of 2014.

Guetty Felin co-directed and produced with her husband Hervé Cohen the critically acclaimed "Closer to the Dream" a feature length documentary on the Obama campaign seen through the lenses of an expatriate filmmaker, her French husband and their bi-racial sons as they search to discover and reconnect with America once again. The film was produced in part with the participation of FRANCE-5 and the CNC (France National Cinema Center). A short version for French public television was aired in August of 2008 and scored the highest ratings of the year and received rave reviews from the press. The feature-length will be aired on American television in January and released on DVD in February 2010.

Throughout her filmmaking career, Ms. Felin has worked on over 70 hours of factual and narrative films for European and American television. Her debut in the industry goes back to 1991 when she worked as Associate Producer for the critically acclaimed Feature-length film Contre l'Oubli (Against forgetting) to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Amnesty International. Guetty assisted on and off the set, various internationally acclaimed film directors (Costas Gavras, Chantal Akermann, Jean Michel Carré, Patrice Chereau, Jean Luc Goddard, Nadine Trintignant to name a few..) to produce a mosaic of compelling and engaging films dealing with human rights abuse cases from around the world. Since the Amnesty experience, Ms. Felin has gone on to working for various production companies and television networks. In 1995 she made her directorial debut with a short documentary film called Uptown a poetic and impressionist portrayal of the community of Harlem as it goes through gentrification seen through the eyes of an ex-convict turned jazz poet, a street preacher turned ordained minister, a woman who has never missed a show at the Apollo Theater (since she moved to Harlem in 1954), and the senior citizens of the Manie Wilson Towers.

Community…Interconnectedness…Her themes as an author seem to meditate around the sometimes unbearable mystery by which our past has created our present, a narrative voice that resonates throughout all her work. Guetty Felin's film repertoire also includes a recent short fiction film entitled Thérèse for the film series Paris La Metisse that brought together in one project, the talents and visions of 15 foreign filmmakers of color living in Paris.

In 2001, Ms. Felin co-produced for the BET, the series Journeys In Black that spanned the lives of well-known African American figures. She is the writer director of the award-winning documentary Hal Singer keep the Music Going on expatriate American jazz musician and founding father of Rhythm and Blues who migrated to Paris in the 60s. The film was co-produced by French television and was showcased at festivals worldwide. The documentary Telling our Stories is set in Cape Town South Africa about South African youths empowering themselves through filmmaking in a workshop headed by Mira Nair, (director of India Cabaret, Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, Namesake and Amelia…)

In August of 2008, after two decades of life abroad, Ms. Felin moved back to the United States. She currently lives in San Francisco with filmmaker husband Hervé Cohen and their sons Yeelen and Joakim. Also in the works is a hybrid fiction project Once upon three times

Partners

  • Arterial network
  • Media, Sports and Entertainment Group (MSE)
  • Gens de la Caraïbe
  • Groupe 30 Afrique
  • Alliance Française VANUATU
  • PACIFIC ARTS ALLIANCE
  • FURTHER ARTS
  • Zimbabwe : Culture Fund Of Zimbabwe Trust
  • RDC : Groupe TACCEMS
  • Rwanda : Positive Production
  • Togo : Kadam Kadam
  • Niger : ONG Culture Art Humanité
  • Collectif 2004 Images
  • Africultures Burkina-Faso
  • Bénincultures / Editions Plurielles
  • Africiné
  • Afrilivres

With the support of