The Sign of the Loa

Cutting through the cliched scripts of Haiti in the popular imagination as poor, backward, and suffused with a demonic religion, this film explores Haitian creativity through the complex geometric design of the vèvè, the sign of the Loa. It suggests that the vèvè, the abstract drawings made by the voodoo priests to invite the divinities or loas, provided the first informal schooling for the arts and produced an aesthetic that is both unique to Haitian creativity and central to its continued artistic production. The film invites the uninformed and wary traveler to put aside unfounded fears of Haiti and to locate in both of these the basis for originality and innovation in new world culture.