little village

On Monday we visited a little village called Bois Boeuf down the end of a long dirt track where they all live in little white homes which were put up after the earthquake.  They were well chuffed we’d made the effort to visit them.  The talent show went down a storm, the three of our jaws dropped when a mum got up and did a perfect version of “English man in New York” by Sting.  All the kids joined in and sang along too!  Also a granny got up and got the whole village singing and dancing – magic moment.

Screenings in Leogane

On Wednesday we left Jacmel for Leogane to do our last few screenings and workshops before returning to the UK. All Hands Disaster Relief (http://hands.org/)kindly invited us to stay in their compound and have been wonderful hosts.

We did some workshops in one of the schools they have rebuilt and tonight did our penultimate screening in a camp known as ‘Stadium’ (it’s in an old football stadium). Below is one of my snapshots. As usual, more professional pictures from Gary to follow…

Bodouin

Over the weekend we had our biggest audiences so far for this trip – up to 400 children and adults a night….

Our MC –  Junior (in the baseball cap) – did an excellent job of organising a big crowd of very excited kids for the pre-film open mic singing and rap competition…

Tuesday is going to be our last night in Jakmel – we’ll be taking the cinema out of town to a little rural camp in the countryside.  Then on Wednesday we’re off to Leogane for our last week in Haiti.

More filmmaking workshops & our biggest screening yet!

We showed the ‘Globe’ film that the Filton College students made for HKKP to the kids at Trinity House and thought it would be great fun to recreate it Haiti style!

The result is a beautiful little film that Gary managed to put together with the kids in just a couple of hours, defying language barriers and production schedules left, right and center!

We’ll put the film online when we get back to the UK but for now here’s a shot of Gary filming on the roof of Trinity house.

This weekend we’ve been screening to our biggest audience yet at a camp called Bodouin on the outskirts of Jacmel, here’s a piccy from the first night, more accomplished photos from Gary to follow!

4 nights at Pinchinat

Last night was the 4th spent in Parc Pinchinat, formerly a football field, it has housed a tent camp since the earthquake.
We originally planned to do just 3 nights, Friday, Saturday & Sunday, but Friday got rained off (after a fun afternoon of playing with the kids though, including a stars in yours eyes singing contest!) and so Marko and Gary returned for a 3rd night of films on Monday night (I was ill).
Saturday went off without a hitch, pictures of that soon. But for now, here’s some pictures of sunday night’s screening which was interrupted by a heavy downpour forcing us to hurriedly move the cinema into a USaid shelter mid-film, a bit of a panic but the atmosphere with everyone huddled into the little shack was really wonderful!

Our abandoned outdoor screen-

Gary and Marko playing with the kids earlier that afternoon-

Trinity House workshops

We’ve now done 2 days of workshops at a wonderful school/orphanage in Jacmel called Trinity House.

We’ve been doing stop motion animation workshops with the kids, and Gary made a mini-documentary with them which we’ll show tonight on the big screen when we do a screening on the football pitch adjacent to the school.

1st screening is a big success

Last night we did our first proper screening in Jacmel, at Port ail Leogane.
The Kids Kino attracted an audience of around 150-200 people, mostly children under 10 and we showed a mix of films including both western and Haitian shorts, as well as the feature ‘Kirikou’ – which the kids really went went wild for!

Gary did some filming with the kids while we waited for it to get dark and has edited a short film out of it, we’ll be playing it back for them on the big screen when we go back for a second round of screenings tonight.

Arrived in Haiti!

The team arrived safely in Haiti on Wednesday, and after picking up the equipment left in Port Au Prince from the last trip, we made our way to Jacmel.
Yesterday we had a successful day of shopping for cinema essentials (ropes, hammer, tarpaulin, etc) followed by visiting some tent camps and other potential screening venues. We ended the day with a test rig of our cinema setup which concluded with the screening of a couple of short films to a gathered crowd of about 8 kids!
A great day in all and we expect to put on our first full scale screening tomorrow (Saturday).