Many thanks to Sally Daniels and Marcus Toop of sustainable architecture group Tangentfield who hosted us at last weekend’s Womad festival. Tangentfield were running a workshop where four teams built four stages – one from bamboo, one from wood managed from the estate where the festival was taking place, and two from recycled materials.
On 4 July, at Arnolfini Bristol, there is a day of film screenings for children and a Zoetrope Workshop. Zoetrope is a magical animation workshop for children to make their very own cartoon to watch on the big screen. Plus there will be screenings of the beautiful Hedgehog in the Fog, Kirikou and the Sorceress & The Red Balloon; all favorites in Haiti with the mobile cinema. All profits will be donated to HKKP. Extra special HKKP T-shirts will be on sale on the day, designed by Lady Lucy.
The children’s film screenings and Zoetrope Workshop will take place on the closing weekend of the Say Parsley exhibition, a sparse sound and language installation by writer and artist Caroline Bergvall and composer Ciarán Maher. The background to ‘Say Parsley’ is the biblical ‘shibboleth’, a violent event where language itself is gatekeeper, and a pretext to massacre. The pronunciation of a given word exposes the identity of the speaker. To speak becomes a give-away. Are you one of us, not one of us? How you speak will be used against you. The massacre of tens of thousands of Creole Haitians on the border of the Dominican Republic (1937) for failing to pronounce “perejil” correctly is the most recent example of a large scale shibboleth.
Nanoplex and HKKP presents: all ages gig with the Dagger Brothers and Vanilla Muffins
2 days of screenings, workshops and raffles, cakes and balloons!!!
Nanoplex presents a fundraising event for HKKP – The Children’s Film and Zoetrope Workshop. An afternoon of screenings, workshops and raffles.HKKP (Haiti Kids Kino Project) is a cultural exchange organised by The Cube Cinema’s childrens’ wing, Nanoplex. We are a mobile cinema projecting films to children in Haiti affected by the earthquakes while also providing workshops for Haitian and Bristol children to make their own films, which are swapped. This is a fundraising event to help keep our extraordinary project alive. Come along and meet the people behind the HKKP, see the Haitian children’s films, and make some fun stuff that will travel all the way to Haiti. A magical Zoetrope workshop for children to make their very own cartoon to watch on the big screen!!
* A chance to make a digital postcard to show children in Haiti. A screening of the beautiful animations Hedgehog in the Fog and Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Sorceress both favorites in Haiti with our mobile cinema
* Raffle
* LadyLucy T Shirts
Haitian children affected by the earthquakes are experiencing untold damage and despair. Further anxiety grows through inaction, loneliness and boredom. HKKP contributes to quality of life through creating, sharing, forging friendships, connections and delighting in film. www.cubecinema.com/haiti
Like to contribute? come to a fund raising event – next up…
Event 5: The Hurt Locker. Tuesday 13th April 8PM at the Cube, £4.
Haiti Kids Kino Project with The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow/ 2009/ USA/ 131 mins/ cert 15. An evening for grown-ups, The Hurt Locker is a welcome return from acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow (The Weight of Water, Point Break), and is based on a sharp script by Mark Boal, a journalist who was attached to a bomb squad in postwar Iraq. Will James (Jeremy Renner) is a fearless bomb disposal expert whose cavalier style upsets colleagues Sandborne (Anthony Mackie) and Eldritch (Brian Geraghty). All are counting the days of the tour.Initially, James wins over Sandborne and Eldritch through his acts of bravery, but after just two weeks of stress, they are seriously considering accidentally killing him. Will James is a credible flawed hero and he draws us in quickly whilst the reality of the situation is electric in its unpredictability.
All evening: cake stall, all funds to the Haiti Kids Kino Project. Do check out past and future events on: http://nanoplex.cubecinema.com/fundraisers.php
Sunday 4th April at the Cube, Bristol. Following on from the enormous success of February’s Nanoplex, in which children in Bristol made film postcard to take to kids in Haiti. Today at the Cube cinema, we have been screening films Haitian kids have made for the Cube. Along with the magical, cult children’s classic ‘The singing, ringing tree’. Children also made more video postcards for our Haitian exchange!
artistry and fun at the cube, drawing and writing messages to Haiti…
Hello Haiti… We send you our love!!!
Postcard making all around!
A day in Port au Prince – by Dave
Today consisted of: Waking up at 7am after 6 hours sleep (a lie in).
Carrefour amputee hospital
Long walk in sun to buy bread and eggs for breakers, as pantry empty (only food for some time to come). Have great first cup of Tetleys, then find everywhere has run out of milk. Marko has phone interview with BBC and APR. Organise day – includes kit cheaks, planning with our host Laurance, from Haitian organization Cinema Under The Stars, about today….many phone calls, emails, more kit checks, contacting people about possible screenings later in the month. Internet access not reliable. Try and have semi successful Cube meeting – but both so tired, keep staring off into space. Saego (driver) and John (translator) arrive. We’re not ready, so they hang out as we get our stuff together, then we all load pick-up with equipment. Need cash so go via ATM, then petrol station, but we are accidentally sent the long way round to Calfor, stuck in dusty polluted traffic, 45 min journy takes 2 plus hours. John suffering headach from heat and dust, which reduces his capacity to translate and focus (poor man is only 18, lost father, mother cant work as injured in earthquake, only provider for family). This leads to us going the wrong way for some time, further delay and a further complication later (will come to that). Arrive at amputee hospital as dusk is falling, meet Laurance’s contact and we have to set up screen and equipment (never done it in the dark before but manage ok), Laurance and Tatiana arrive,
Putting up the screen in the dark for the first time.
amid crowd of excited people who cant understand why it not on right now! (bless). Work out screening program: French short, Shaun the Sheep again (…damn they love that little guy), one of Laurances educational safety cartoons, then short insparational film about amputees and how they can manage their disabilities, followed by talk by Laurances friend of been or be a victim of this (followed by talk). Then, to cap it all off….yes you guessed it – Shaun the Sheep. (somewhere in there Dave and Marko interviewed by reporter and photographer from Daily Mirror, pos article this Mon to be confirmed) Followed by talk and requests for more films – by kids and by democratic kiddie election……our wooly friend Shaun (we’re on first name terms now) wins presidential election.
Kids thanks us for showing them these films.
Time to pack away equipment and screen (which we have not done in dark before but manage). Talk to Laurence’s friend, who thanks us for coming. We introduce the idea that we could show them the short messages from Bristol kids and film the kids at the amputee hospital giving their message to Bristol kids. She tells us that that would be a really great idea and we start to talk about details.
She then tells us about how she lost her house and entire family of 17, including her children and that she lives at the hospital now helping the kids, but it is a private hospital and they are now starting to move the kids out on to the streets (in batches..) to be homeless……or slaves. Best to make the film messages tomorrow morning, as the hospital now wants the car park back, as its where the amputee kids and adults now live. Arrange to return at 9:30a.m. to make film messages.
Eventually pack everything away and drive home.
Stop off in petrol station to buy cold beer (shelves empty of beer, though have two small bottles of Guiness left which is better then nothing and high in iron I understand), try to buy food which we haven’t seen since this morning, time now 10 something, settle for 2 bags of crisps, some Dairylie – I mean Dairylea – and two pieces of what some folk may call pizza only to find there was only one piece in the box and myself and Marko cut it in two to share. Arrive home. Lengthy discussion with Saego and John about money given for petrol (honest mistake sorted in the end) due to John being ill and unfocused enough to translate properly – though freaked both of them out as they misunderstood us and thought that we thought they were being dishonest, and they were going to lose their jobs which they desperately need. Finally, I hope we did a good enough job to convince them they weren’t and John phoned a little while ago just to confirm it was all cool.Unpack. Home. I write this (occasional gun fire in back ground). Accomplishments of today:
Made some amputee kids happy for a few hours, promoted project enabling further funding (with luck), arranged postcards and cultural exchange for tomorrow, promote Laurence and Cinema under the stars, put money into pocket of Saego and John who both need it.All for now….
HKKP appears in article from the Royal Geographical Society
… and …
Marko and Dave appear at the end of this show, a co-production between the World Service and APR.
[audio:http://media.theworld.org/audio/03232010full.mp3|titles=Public Radio International’s “The World”]
We’ve been staying with Sinema Anba Zetwal , and have mentioned them a lot in the blog, here’s some information about them written by Laurence – FastForward HAITI and MWÈM Foundation have been alive and active in the Haitian community since 2002 Through “Sinema anba Zetwal” Cinema Under the Stars, FastForward HAITI and the MWEM Foundation have created a setting where local Haitian communities can come together and share the experience of viewing and learning from documentaries and films produced (mostly) by-Haitians for-Haitians; all this, in a conscious effort to give viewers an important opportunity to look at themselves, their culture, and their patrimony objectively. The Haiti Kids Kino project is now collaborating with sinema anba zetwa (check out this link to see some of their work).