Photos of MANNO CHARLEMAGNE LIVE! on Haitian Flag Day, May 18th, 2010

following a screening of:
Dans La Gueule Du Crocodile, un portrait de Manno Charlemagne
(In the Jaws of the Crocodile)
Dirs. Catherine Larivain & Lucie Ouimet, 1998, 52 min.

A film portrait of Manno Charlemagne, activist poet and singer who resisted Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier during his brutal, corrupt reign, and who later became the mayor of Port-au-Prince.

"Manno, he's just got a heartbreakingly beautiful, fantastically communicative voice. Had Manno not been this guy - who, for whatever reasons, channeled his art into the circumstances of the people - Manno would be as famous as anybody..." [says filmmaker Jonathan Demme]. Demme and others gathered international support and offered Charlemagne refuge in Miami. During that stretch, Charlemagne wrote some of his most haunting music, like "La Fimen," or "The Smoke."

Manno Charlemagne