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Read the press release here.

11 Events Celebrating Haitian Culture Coming to New York in May and June

By Rachel Holliday Smith | April 29, 2016 4:19pm | Updated on May 2, 2016 7:18am
 Kids celebrate Haitian Flag Day at a Haiti Cultural Exchange event at Parkside Plaza in Brooklyn last year.
Kids celebrate Haitian Flag Day at a Haiti Cultural Exchange event at Parkside Plaza in Brooklyn last year.
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Keylah Mellon

BROOKLYN — Time for a selebrasyon!

Two months of film screenings, performances, pop-up sales and exhibits celebrating Haitian arts and culture kicks off this weekend in the city, according to organizers from the Crown Heights-based non-profit Haiti Cultural Exchange.

The biennial Selebrasyon! festival begins Sunday with a party, pop-up gallery and arts workshop as the Affirmation Arts Gallery in Hell’s Kitchen, the group said.

The festival will continue throughout May and June, bringing events on the theme of “libète,” or freedom, to Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens to “explore artistic movements of the 30 years subsequent to the fall of the Duvalier regime in Haiti,” organizers said.

A majority of the events are set to take place in Brooklyn. The festival includes a live performance from Haitian music collective Lakou Mizik at BRIC in Fort Greene on May 6, an exhibition by Haitian artists Nathalie Jolivert and Mahalia Stines at the FiveMyles gallery in Crown Heights from May 12 to June 4 and a public celebration of Haitian Flag Day on May 18 at the Shapeshifter Lab in Gowanus.

A handful of events will take place in Manhattan and Queens, as well, including a salon of Haitian writers at the Queens Museum on June 19 and conversation with Haitian poet Danielle Legros Georges at the Bowery Poetry Club on June 26.

The festival will end on June 30 with a special event and tasting celebrating Haitian cuisine at the Crown Heights beer hall, Berg’n.

The Selebrasyon! festival began in 2014, organizers said, and continues as the “only festival [in New York] dedicated to the promotion of the highest caliber film, dance, music, literature, and visual art of Haiti and its diaspora,” the Haitian Cultural Exchange said in a statement.

For a complete lineup of events in the festival, visit haiticulturalx.org.