Raoul Peck Humanitarian Filmmaker

Haitian Raoul Peck, documentarian and feature-filmmaker, began life in Port-au-Prince in 1953. A few years later, François Duvalier's reign began, creating fear in Haitians and causing many to leave and reside elsewhere. Peck's family moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where they lived for the next quarter-century. Peck studied in the DRC and the U.S., his interests drawing him to journalism and photography, but he earned his film degree in Berlin.

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As documentarian, Raoul Peck produced and directed before entering feature filmmaking. He achieved early success with 1993's "The Man by the Shore", which became an official entry at Cannes that year. Then Peck received unprecedented global recognition for his film "Lumumba" in 2000. His subsequent film, "Lumumba--Death of a Prophet", grabbed Best Documentary award at Montréal in 2002. He has also received many awards for directing attention to human-rights abuses in his film work. Human Rights Watch bestowed two Lifetime Achievement Awards on him in 2001 and 2003.

Raoul Peck left filmmaking briefly in the 90s to become Haiti's Minister of Culture, and wrote a book about his time in office, "Monsieur le Ministre . . . jusqu'au bout de la patience".

He has spent 30 years producing films on a variety of subject matter, and in 2012 he served as jury member at the Cannes Film Festival. His publisher issued Stolen Images, a compendium of his major screen-writing achievements. Presently Raoul Peck spends part of each year in Africa, the U.S., Europe, and Haiti, where he has residences.

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