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sl8

(16,273 posts)
Wed Aug 21, 2024, 04:55 AM Aug 2024

Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood is on borrowed time. A film is documenting it all

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/20/nx-s1-5073880/mountains-film-miami-little-haiti
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Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood is on borrowed time. A film is documenting it all

AUGUST 21, 2024 5:00 AM ET
HEARD ON MORNING EDITION
By Greg Allen

MIAMI — For decades a neighborhood in Miami known as Little Haiti has been the center of the Haitian community. But what's made the area so unique now has the attention of developers.

A filmmaker wanted to document the changes and highlight the struggles of people living there — and it's all part of a film released this month.

The film Mountains tells the story of a family that’s experiencing the changes firsthand in Little Haiti. It’s shot with a Haitian American cast with dialogue in Haitian Creole and is being released nationwide this month.

Little Haiti is a neighborhood known for the colorful storefronts of convenience stores, restaurants and botanicas lining Miami’s Second Avenue. People sit on chairs outside the stores and their homes as the occasional rooster struts by. Haitians fleeing poverty and political repression began coming here in the 1970s and '80s. It wasn’t until 2016 though, that Miami officially designated the neighborhood “Little Haiti.”

It’s the setting for the first full-length feature by Haitian American filmmaker Monica Sorelle. At Choublak, a coffee shop and visitor’s center in Little Haiti, Sorelle told NPR in an interview, “We actually shot here. The scene where Esperanza’s on her walk and stops at the vendor. It was here.”

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