Synopsis

In Haiti, there is one band that has seen it all: Septentrional. For six decades this 20-piece band has been making beautiful music. Septentrional has already survived twelve years longer than the expected Haitian lifespan. Led by 80-year-old leader, “Maestro” Ulrick Pierre Louis, its players have been making music through dictatorships, natural disasters, and chaos, navigating the ups and downs, the glory and the tragedy that is Haitian history. As they now face perhaps the country’s greatest tragedy, the earthquake that killed almost 300,000 in January 2010, they have to find the strength to go on.

Director

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  • Whitney Dow
  • As the director of the films *Two Towns of Jasper*, *I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfinished Nation*, he has won numerous awards, including the Peabody, Dupont Columbia Award, and the Beacon Award. Other works he has been involved in include Marco Williams' *Freedom Summer*, *Exiled: How White Americans Expelled Blacks from Towns* and *Undocumented*, as well as Kristi Jacobson's *Toots*.