In the Chanzy neighbourhood of Pointe-à-Pitre, the economic and administrative centre of the French-Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, bulldozers knock down condemned apartment blocks, consigning them to the past. Amid these ruins wanderers make their way through the empty, ghostly streets, themselves consigned to society’s margins but refusing to be knocked over and lost to history. 

L’Homme-Vertige: Tales of a City, the debut feature film by Guadeloupean artist Malaury Eloi Paisley, follows some of these wanderers—prophets and seers—through a city both decaying and frozen in time. There is the elderly, cancer-ridden Ti Chal, who once answered the call to join the Cuban Revolution. Eddy, who battles a drug addiction and hopes to be with his family again, speaks in rhapsodies. Conversely, the soft-spoken Eric recites literary texts as he observes the burgeoning liberation movement of his island. 

Inspired by the Spiralism movement of Haitian art, which embraced formal chaos and non-linearity in response to the Caribbean’s modern reality, and working collaboratively with her participants in a way that recalls Pedro Costa, Khalik Allah, and Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Eloi Paisley has crafted a poetic, deeply empathetic film, a moving portrait of resistance and survival. 

A conversation with Malaury-Eloi Paisley will follow the screening, hosted by curator Jonathan Ali.