Learn more about When the Drum is Beating on the Independent Lens website.

In preparation for the release of Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, I was asked by ITVS to blog about it for Beyond the Box. While I’d like to think it’s because of my terribly trenchant observations about art, a subject I occasionally write about for The Huffington Post, it’s probably because I am Haitian.

Basquiat was born of a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father; but I can tell you that to us, that darling of the 1980s New York art scene who went on to international fame and fortune, was of course Haitian! The natural outgrowth of a country where an artist is born every day. In fact, Haiti just might be the biggest source for black art in the world; so it makes total sense that a wunderkind like Basquiat should hail from there.

I had seen the Julian Schnabel feature, which chronicled the artist’s short life. I visited the electrifying retrospective of his work hosted by MOCA in 2005. I bought the catalog and often browse its pages, marveling at the man-child’s lavish creative output, searching for references that speak of Haiti. But this film gripped me in a way that transcended my Haitian filter.

Directed by Tamra Davis, Basquiat’s longtime friend, the viewer is regaled with footage of the artist responding to questions about his lifestyle, his art process, the art world’s perception of him; about race, and racism toward him; his new-found fame and its repercussions … you know, the things you would ask if you could hang with him and have a cup of tea, or vodka.

Of course, I wanted more. I enjoyed listening to reflections of the people who loved him, lived with him and did business with him, but in the end, the enigmatic artist (who might be diagnosed with Aspberger Syndrome were he alive today) is the one you want. Like clues to a life-changing puzzle, or diamonds that shine a light on your soul, I hung onto his every word for a wider glimpse into that radiant mind of his.

And then there is the art. Happily, the film shows lots of it. Although we hear many hotshot art dealers proclaiming Basquiat a genius based on his early drawings and graffiti scrawls, I can’t say I would have been as insightful. To my eye, they looked like the drawings of a 7-year-old. There, I said it. But as the film progresses, we are treated to the artist’s creative evolution; and it is jaw-dropping, powerful, and heady stuff.

Although vastly different in style, the art brought to mind the work of an artist who goes by Killy. Fifteen years older than Basquiat was when he died, his paintings and sculptures are forceful, emotional, and gripping without revealing his native roots. Perhaps art has nothing to do with place, and everything to do with the soul. But Killy is Haitian, and so was Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Carine Fabius is an author, museum curator, and owner of Los Angeles-based Galerie Lakaye, which specializes in Haitian art.

Tuesday marked the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day and to honor the occasion, BTB presented a live chat with PBS NewsHour on Women’s Empowerment. The documentary Pushing the Elephant (airing March 29 on Independent Lens) was featured prominently in the discussion, with the filmmakers and subject, Rose Mapendo, participating in the chat. This month, ITVS staffers will offer up their very personal responses to the documentary about one Congolese refugee’s attempt to find forgiveness and start a new life. Today’s post comes from our Senior Publicity Manager, Voleine Amilcar.

One of the great things about working at ITVS is the exposure to a steady stream of great documentaries that have the power to move you. Every now and then a documentary comes along and strikes a personal chord. In the upcoming Independent Lens broadcast, Pushing the Elephant, I found a story that mirrored a definitive moment in my life.

Voleine Amilcar

I was most moved by the forced separation of Rose and her daughter Nangabire. Rose made the heart-wrenching decision to leave behind five-year-old Nangabire during the ethnic violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rose managed to escape with nine of her 10 children and eventually resettled in Phoenix, Arizona — but she had to live with the biting reality that she had left one child behind.

In the early 1980s my parents emigrated from Haiti to California, fleeing the repression of the Duvalier dictatorship and in search of more favorable economic opportunities. They made a difficult decision to leave my sister and I behind in the care of extended family. I was barely a toddler and my sister was just a few years older. But they were propelled by the hope of a better future for us.

My family’s journey to America was far less harrowing than what Rose and her 10 children witnessed and survived. But watching the film I understood the unspoken words between Rose and Nangabire when they were reunited 10 years later. I experienced the same silent exchanges with my mother years later when we reunited in California as we struggled to make up for lost time.

I saw in Rose my mother’s strong resilience that enabled her to help my sister and I to look forward and move past those years she was absent from our lives.  And as I watched Nangabire struggle to adapt to life in America, I recalled my own awkward struggles of assimilation to life in a strange new land.

At the end of the film, what I saw reflected was a family that survived unspeakable horrors only to emerge triumphant, despite all that they had faced. Their story was a strong reminder for me to never forget the biggest sacrifice my parent’s made for the sake of our family’s future.

In addition to Children of Haiti, which broadcast Tuesday night on Independent Lens, ITVS has profiled issues in Haiti in the past in these two films:

Egalité for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution tells the story of a movement that’s been called the true birth moment of universal human rights.

Unfinished Country, reveals life on Haiti’s streets and among its power brokers as the country endeavors to fashion a representative government out of a volatile state.

Plus, airing Thursday night is the documentary Nou Bouke, which focuses on the January 12 disaster. Narrated by award-winning Haitian author Edwidge Danticat, the hour-long film will air on public television stations nationwide.

Finally, NBPC’s Haiti: One Day, One Destiny is a multimedia portal of stories about Haiti after the earthquake available on BlackPublicMedia.org.

You can also find excellent coverage of Haiti, one year later, on the PBS NewsHour’s website.

Have a look at this audio slideshow by Rick Loomis, a Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer for the Los Angeles Times. He arrived in Haiti one day after the quake to document the tragedy. Loomis returned to the country again in November to cover a looming hurricane and the continuing spread of cholera.

Children of Haiti airs Tuesday on Independent Lens

In the midst of Haiti’s lush mountains and historical relics is an epidemic of over 500,000 orphan children who wander the streets day and night. Known as the “soulless” and forgotten by their own people, they do what they must to survive each day.

Children of Haiti, airing Tuesday night at 10 PM on Independent Lens (check local listings) follows three teenage boys who reflect on their country and their lives, while sharing a common dream of education, government assistance, and social acceptance.

Watch the broadcast and check back in to BTB on Wednesday, January 12 at 12 PM Pacific (3 PM Eastern) for a live chat with the director of Children of Haiti, Alex Hammond.

Regine Zamor is one of the producers of Children of Haiti

This Tuesday, Independent Lens presents the documentary Children of Haiti, one year after the country was rocked by a devastating earthquake. The film follows three Haitian teenage boys who live on the streets as they reflect on their country, their lives, and the hope they have for a better future. Regine Zamor is one of the producers of Children of Haiti and offered BTB this report about the countries recovery efforts a year later, and ways viewers can help.

In just a few days Haiti will commemorate its most recent national holiday, January 12, 2011.  As we grow closer to the date people are saying that there have been small aftershocks; some are afraid of the chance of another earthquake, and everyone I have spoken with has expressed that they are feeling anxious — myself included.

On this day last year, Haiti was about to experience devastation that no one — not the UN, not Haitians, and not NGOs — had ever seen before. One year later we are still traumatized and preparing to relive our trauma.

Today we are survivors and heroes.  We live and work to survive through the country’s complicated journey to recovery.

The universe has offered a space for Haiti to change and for the crew of Children of Haiti to share a powerful piece of work at a time when the children of Haiti matter the most.

When you see the boys telling their stories, traveling through their city, and taking you on a journey through their lives over the course of several years, there is one thing to keep in mind: why are they there and how did this happen?

Much of the work that began through the production and outreach of the film has led to real community development work with Richard Morse of the band RAM, the villagers of Bar Gormand, and the community of Carrefour Feuilles.  The issues surrounding unaccompanied/orphaned children in Haiti have more to do with economics and education than anything else.

Did these children’s families give them to others in the cities to become restaveks —the equivalent of child slaves — or were the children forced to take to the streets themselves? No matter the circumstances, the common thread is that their familial and community support system is too weak to sustain them.

Haiti is a lot more fragile than before, yet the possibilities exist for a change that everyone has been waiting for. Solving the problem of street children means addressing the fact that these children’s families cannot support them. Understanding Haiti, its people, and its future requires seeing the country through the eyes of its youth, who make up the majority of its population.

We aim to keep Haiti relevant by facilitating the voice of the children, sharing it with the world, and promoting local organizations that focus on community development and the reintegration of children back to their families and communities.

Please take a minute to learn about some of the organizations below and ways you can help the recovery efforts in Haiti.

• Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees
Empowers low-wage immigrants so that they can fight for dignity and justice in their working and living conditions.

• The Lambi Fund of Haiti
Assists the popular, democratic movement in Haiti with a goal of strengthening civil society as a necessary foundation of democracy and development. The fund channels financial and other resources to community-based organizations that promote the social and economic empowerment of the Haitian people.

• Haiti Soleil
A mission to build and develop community-centered public libraries, museums, and other institutions of educational and cultural exchange focused on advancing the intellectual growth of young Haitian citizens.

• Kids Alive – Haiti
They are in Cap-Haitian and Port-au-Prince, and headquarters in Indianapolis. They are currently helping the street boys and street kids.

• SOIL
This is a non-profit dedicating to protecting soil resources, empowering communities, and transforming waste into resources. They also have a division where they help children through community projects and education.

NCME Executive Director Charles Meyer

What is the National Center for Media Engagement’s involvement within the Haiti relief effort?  How did you go about developing the tools available on your website?
NCME created a Haitian Relief Resources page that aggregates public media links and resources into one-stop shopping for stations that wanted to collaborate with their communities during the crisis. The page serves as an online hub with resources, tools, and tips for stations to use when working with their communities on the issue. And it was important for us to include a widget for stations to share what they are doing with others in the system. In our experience, sharing models of what works — and what doesn’t work – is one of the quickest ways to improve engagement across the system. This effort –– like our effort to aggregate H1N1 resources –– supports our mission to help public media discover, understand and address the needs of their local communities.

Have you received any feedback from public television stations?  How are they using the tools to communicate with each other?
Stations usually appreciate anything that makes it easier for them to locate resources and think about how to effectively serve their communities. And stations have shared information about their local activities in the online widget. That not only helps other stations spark ideas and identify smart practices –– it also helps us aggregate information and stories about the amazing impact public stations have at the local level. Telling our compelling collective story is good for everyone.

I noticed there are downloadable PSAs to donate money. How did you go about making these available for public television?
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) worked with the American Red Cross and the Ad Council to make the public service announcements available to stations. At NCME, we were happy to include the link to download the PSAs on our Haitian Relief Resources page. We also worked with the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) to arrange a satellite feed for stations that preferred to record the spots.

Watch these public service announcements available on NCME’s Haiti relief effort resource page:

Social media tools are becoming an increasingly important way of communicating for stations and their local communities. How are you working with stations to reach a digitally connected audience?
Many stations already do a great job of reaching audiences in the digital space. We’re interested in how you help people move from online to in the community. There’s a growing body of research that suggests people who engage online are more likely to get involved in their communities than those who don’t engage online. That presents an incredible opportunity for public stations to become a kind of conduit –– a pathway of sorts –– to help people move from online participation to getting out and making a difference in their communities. But nobody knows for sure yet what works and why. We’re very, very interested in learning more about that so we can identify potential models for stations. We’re plugged into and learning a lot about social media tools (join us on Facebook and Twitter) and we’re interested in infusing engagement thinking into other initiatives in the digital space. I’m very excited about the potential.

Do you have plans to offer resources for other significant world events?
In general, yes.  We think part of our role is to help stations think about how to collaborate with and support their communities during a crisis. We’re also engaging with other organizations in the system to ensure that our efforts complement theirs and that, to the extent possible, we’re collaborating with each other rather than each trying to do it alone.

Learn more about NCME and the resources offered >>

Voleine Amilcar (right) with her cousin who survived the Haiti earthquake.

The library in Carrefour-Feuilles, a town outside the capital, before the earthquake.

The library after the earthquake.

It has been almost a month since the massive earthquake in Haiti and the glare of the media is dimming but for many Haitian Americans the shock and deadly impact of the earthquake still haunts us.

As a Haitian American, I was deeply affected by the massive earthquake in Haiti that occurred on January 12. I was in Los Angeles for work to manage a press conference for an upcoming Independent Lens program, Dirt! The Movie, when I received news of the 7.0 Earthquake. But I didn’t understand the enormity, the level of devastation the quake had caused until I was able to turn the TV to CNN.

The epicenter of the quake was situated about 20 minutes from where many of my relatives lived in Haiti. Immediately I called my parents who live 30 minutes outside of San Francisco to find out if they had heard from family members in Haiti. They had not been able to get through to anyone on their cell phones or house phones. Then the waiting game began and the agony set in as I watched endless images and footage of collapsed buildings and bodies being pulled out of those very familiar cinder block homes and buildings. My mind couldn’t stop racing with the awful possibilities. A wave of despair washed over me when I saw images of the partially collapsed presidential palace. Despite a myriad of corrupt inhabitants, the presidential palace was for many Haitians a source of pride. But the symbolism, a defeated government, could not be ignored. And I thought, Haiti has been brought to its knees.

Three days after the earthquake we received word that my cousins and uncles had survived the quake. One of my uncles lost his home and was transported to the Dominican Republic for an operation on his broken arm. Another cousin sustained a broken leg. Most of my relatives were now homeless. Everyone was accounted for except for a dear woman named Madame Alexi who helped raised me when I lived in Haiti. For days, a dark cloud hung over me as I waited to hear about Madame Alexi’s whereabouts. Was she alive? And how would we ever know if whether she was one of the thousands buried under the rubble? Ten days later we were able to connect with Madame Alexi to confirm that she was safe. Her dream house, which included the room she had prepared for me for my visits to Haiti, collapsed entirely. And now she is among the thousands who are homeless, living in her front yard with the rest of her family staying close to what remains of their house because bodies still litter the streets.

Just five days before the earthquake my husband, an IT professional, returned from a volunteer trip in Haiti after setting up a computer lab in Carrefour-Feuilles, a town right outside the capital. He made it back safely but the library where he had set up the computer lab is now partially collapsed. And we have since received updates that some of the children that frequented the library have not survived.  Most people are relieved for me when they discover that my family survived the quake as if that’s the end of it. But the grief and trauma is not any less for me or for my family here in the states. While we have lost nothing, we still walk on shaky ground.

The Haitian community is grateful of the enormous generosity of the global community to bring relief to Haiti. But even with the steady stream of aid coming into the country, food distribution is slow and medical aid is still scarce if not non-existent. The devastation is widespread and the devastation is enormous and unimaginable.

Haitians since ousting the French in 1803, resulting in the only successful slave insurrection in history, have shown remarkable capacity to prevail and survive. The country has withstood endless natural disasters, political instability, and even major acts of exploitation by other more powerful nations. But nothing seems to manage to kill the spirit and resiliency of the people. I have a belief –– and have to maintain this belief –– that the country will spring back even stronger and better than before. But we will need strong acts of will, resolve, and resources to prosper and to become independent.

In Creole, (the indigenous language of Haiti), we have a proverb that says “Men anpil, chay pa lou,” many hands, make the load lighter. The Haitian people have a heavy load and we will indeed need many hands to rise up again. ?

- Voliene Amilcar
ITVS Publicity Manager

Toussaint Louverture of Haiti.

Since the massive earthquake devastated Haiti two weeks ago, volunteers and organizations from around the world have rallied together in support. Recently, the Hope for Haiti Now telethon, which aired on public television stations and other media outlets, raised more than $58 million in donations.

Despite the massive worldwide effort, the news coverage continues to grow dire –– with rising death toll numbers and reports of missing children and families.

But how much does the world really know about Haiti? While most media coverage mentions Haiti’s severe poverty, little has been told about its revolutionary past and leading role in the human rights movement.

In the clip below of the ITVS film Egalité for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, learn more about how Toussaint Louverture led the only successful slave insurrection in history. His thoughts transformed the way people thought during the nineteenth century and inspired slaves and abolitionist worldwide.

Everyone at ITVS would like to express our deepest sympathy to all those impacted by this tragedy as well as thank everyone who has supported the rebuilding efforts. The National Center for Media Engagement has also been active in supporting the nationwide public station response in the Haitian relief effort.

Learn more about NCME and their impact >>

Looking to lend your support in the form of a donation? Here are some options:

• Make your donation online at www.hopeforhaitinow.org
• Phone: 877-99-HAITI
• Text: Text “GIVE” to 50555 to donate $10.
• Mail: Hope For Haiti Now Fund, Entertainment Industry Foundation, 1201 West 5th Street, Suite T-700, Los Angeles, CA 90017

Justin Timberlake. Exclusive behind-the-scenes photos by Jeff Kravitz/Film Magic, http://insidecelebpics.com

Last Friday night, public television stations, along with other networks, online broadcasters, and cable television stations across the nation and around the world joined together to air the commercial-free broadcast of the global telethon, Hope For Haiti Now.

So far, more than $58 million has been raised –– and this figure is expected to grow since corporate donations and iTunes purchases have yet to be tallied.

Hosted by actor George Clooney in Los Angeles, musician Wyclef Jean in New York City, and journalist Anderson Cooper in Haiti, the two-hour telethon included performances by Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Coldplay, Jennifer Hudson, Shakira, Mary J. Blige, Madonna, Bono, and others.

Check out the moving performance below of Mary J. Blige singing Hard Times Come Again No More:

Songs from the telethon are available for purchase on iTunes for 99 cents each or the full album for $7.99.

Download now on iTunes >>

Proceeds from all purchases will go to a number of relief organizations, including the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, the United Nations World Food Program, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the American Red Cross, UNICEF, and Wyclef’s Yéle Haiti Foundation.

Looking to lend your support in the form of a donation? Here are some options:
• Make your donation online at www.hopeforhaitinow.org
• Phone: 877-99-HAITI
• Text: Text “GIVE” to 50555 to donate $10.
• Mail: Hope For Haiti Now Fund, Entertainment Industry Foundation, 1201 West 5th Street, Suite T-700, Los Angeles, CA 90017

Check out more exclusive, behind-the-scenes photos below from Jeff Kravitz/Film Magic

Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, and Keith Urban perform on stage.

Cindy Crawford, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, and Julia Roberts are ready to answer the phones.

George Clooney having fun on set with John Krasinski, Helen Mirren, Jack Nicholson, and other stars.

Jack Nicholson trying to break Robert DeNiro’s concentration with Leonardo DiCaprio.