MANHATTAN (1609)
Some four centuries ago, Protestants from Belgium and the North of France, chased from their region by war and religion, left to build a new life in the New World. Upon their arrival, they purchased virgin lands from the Indians where they started a settlement, never imagining that one day it would become the most famous city in the world: New York. This film is about the pre-history of New York. It is above all that of Europe of the 17th century, ravaged by a terrible war of religion: men and women, fleeing an intolerant Old Continent, abandoning their trades, their families, and the vast majority of their goods, to find refuge in a savage land in order to live freely and in peace. It corrects the historical misconception still recorded in our school books, which has it that Peter Stuyvesant is the city’s founder. It explains that many years before he arrived on the scene, the navigator Henry Hudson, the original 30 families from the North of France and the South of Belgium and governor Peter Minuit, were the real founders of what became the state and the city of New York.
