If cinema advances like a train in the night, the entire Haitian media landscape has, on its part, deliberately barricaded the stations, cut the rails, and extinguished the lanterns. There is no air time dedicated to the practice of cinema in our broadcasting system, and even less so in our television schedules. No critical shows, analyses, or decryptions. No lively discussions about the latest work of one of our filmmakers. No passionate debates where a sound engineer, a cinematographer, a makeup artist, or a production manager could come to inspire cinephiles and arouse the interest of the younger generation. No portraits or journalistic files dedicated to the great moments of national cinema or the careers of our pioneers. No sets welcoming film crews to promote their movies. No studio seems to bother meeting these artists of light to unveil their universe and present the behind-the-scenes to our youth. But how can a country that desperately needs to dream, that needs to heal its wounds through catharsis and sublimation, so thoroughly ignore the greatest invention of the 20th century?

If we must question the marginalization of the seventh art in our media, we must also remember what cinema truly is, what it demands from us, and what it offers us in return. For although it began as a popular fairground attraction, it subsequently emerged, a century later, as a major art form, a powerful political tool, and, of course, a mirror of global sociological developments. Transitioning from the status of a carnival attraction to that of a complex narrative art, cinema has never been conceived as merely a Sunday entertainment that one consumes mechanically between two commercial breaks — even if television has intervened. We need to understand that the cinematic device constitutes a specular surface that reflects the dizzying abysses of our interiority. In other words, this philosophy in motion is an open window onto the otherness.