19th of feb Carnival night here again
Ciccone calls us and proposes the idea of playing a DJ set from our balcony which is situated on the main Karnival drag.  He wants to pump out some UK hardcore electro dub-core to the Jacmel revelers and see how it goes down…we say yes. Inbetween the Ra-Ra bands, Ciccone blasts out his delirious set to the audience below, on the street Jessica dances Poi and a circle of onlookers gather around her, the contrast between the Carnival Horn Ra-Ra bands and the electro insanity of his passion will be remembered. We dance to a twisted version of ‘I wanna dance with somebody’ and share a moment for Whitney Huston.

Had a really good conversation with Arraon who runs the arts center here, he’s very interetsed in what we’re doing and if the project continues wants to work with us on it, great news for any furture work here.

Later on I follow a most surreal and compelling Voodoo zombie procession, one of the kids from camp Poi sees me in the crowd and takes me by the hand together we follow the spectacle, of the likes I’ve never seen.

On the 17th of feb, for the final kids screening at camp Pacchiant we joined forces with a theatre crew, bringing to the camp a Poi making workshop and performance. This idea came out of a chance street meeting with Jessica Tea Faerie an expert in the art of Poi.

Jessia arrived, bringing the rest of her motley theatre crew, a US group of Rainbow Gathering veterans.  We met Aaron who’s been living here for 2 years and runs an independent arts space in the centre of Jacmel, Ciccone a DJ who’s trying to bring UK hardcore electro dub-core to the people of Haiti and Marissa who’s making a film of their escapades.

The workshop was frantic, brilliant and exciting with the kids making poi sets out of recylced materils and then trying them out with Jessica giving playful demonstrations of all the ways to swing them. It looks like camp Pac Caif houses some Poi naturals…. Later we showed the Poi films and Jessica preformed a fire poi dance to an enthralled audience, the evening was capped with cheers for Kiriku !

Jessica really loved the experience and talked about returning to the camp to carry on what we started, thinking about new connections developing through our work here is comforting and inspiring thought.

….on the way home we ran into our first glimpse of the weeks epic and wayward karnaval extravaganza.

Heres some pictures of our screenings at the Bois Beouf camp.

The children where really pleased to see a return of HKKP.

Using the little flip cams they made some films tours of the camp, we also shot more slow-motion jumps and footie,  they all loved watching the results, lots of laughs.
Later we settled down under the Mango tree to watch the feature film, I watched fire flies, weaving in and out of the trees branches as the darkness descended.

The camp housing is very unusual in design, it reminds me of Buckminster Fuller architecture. Most of the people here are earthquake refugees from Port-au-Prince, a friendly woman tells us, next year they’ll move out of the camp, the camp seems peaceful and quite, a complete contrast to the hectic hustle and bustle of Port-au-Prince.

During the early evening of the 7th we made our third and final screening at the Belval, Caboulosse camp. Over the course of the three days we’d been playing skipping, football and chasing games. I filmed the games using the slow motion setting on the camera, we then played the films back to the children on the big cinema screen the kids and all absolutely loved it!!!! Thanks Mr Hopkison for the inspiration! We screened some of skipping and football films using the music of Zun Zun Egui as sound track, we also set up a Mic and children spontaneously joined in doing running commentaries and singing alongside, making the experience a rich and creative mix.

Hogge came up with the idea of doing a slap stick, throwing water sketch, so we staged the seen, Berlyene our wonderful translator and guide threw water over Hogge whilst i filmed it in slow-mo we then played it back on the big screen to a stunned silence, quickly followed by the children also wanting to do it, so we made a few water slap stick sketches and played them back to a laughing crowed. Next was time for the talent show, during our three times here the children have staged some wonderful singing and rapping performances, coming across as totally confident and in their element.

Once the talent show was finished we all settled down to watch a short Haitian animation followed by the red balloon, which went down really well, everyone laughing, gasping and cheering in all the right places, it was lovely to be amongst such an animated fun audience, of mixed ages.