THE AGRONOMIST

[] (three stars)

Solid doc. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (disturbing images). At the Lincoln Plaza, the Angelika.

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JONATHAN Demme is best known as the director of “The Silence of the Lambs,” but he has also turned out a number of fine documentaries over the years, the latest being “The Agronomist,” his fourth film about the tragic island republic of Haiti.

This one focuses on Jean Dominique, a radio personality and human-rights activist who was assassinated in 2000 at Radio Haiti-Inter, which he used to become deeply involved in Haiti’s sorrowful politics.

Drawing on interviews he shot with Dominique and his wife, Michele Montas, beginning in 1993 when they were in exile in New York, Demme paints a compelling portrait of an agriculturalist who became one of his country’s most articulate and charismatic voices.

But Dominique was disappointed time and again as Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier were succeeded as dictators by a military junta that turned out to be as brutal as its predecessors.

Dominique embraced reformer Jean-Claude Aristide, who was elected president due to U.S. military involvement in 1990, but Aristide was quickly pushed aside by the military – and when Aristide eventually returned to power with U.S. backing, Dominique was distressed his old ally was collaborating with his old foes.

“The Agronomist” uses archival footage and music to tell a moving story that’s all too common in the Third World.