More from the Stadium

The old disused cinema in Leogane in the background.  Someone even climbed up on top to watch the films (look close on low bit to the left)

Rappers taking control of the stage.  Probably doing the most performed song of the trip “Benaki”  – which goes “Benaki, Benaki.  Look at me i’ve got money!”  Biggest song in Haiti at the moment.  The crowds loved it everytime, we had from 4 year olds to 15 year olds performing it every talent show.

Leogane Stadium Screenings

A  large tented and corrugated hut camp occupies Leogane’s stadium.  We set up next to the stadium and quite aptly the old cinema for two nights of screening.  We were right in the middle of town, and it felt a bit like a drive in as motor bikes pulled up and stayed for the show!  Last screening in Leogane tomorrow then off to Port au Prince before we fly home on Tuesday.  It’s felt like a long time, respect to Marko and Dave for managing 7 weeks last year in the post earthquake chaos.  Also we’ve met a lot of people who’ve been out here long term working on rebuilding Haiti – inspiring stuff.

HKKP fashion shoot!

It’s not all work work work.  We managed to pop to the beach in Leogane for a quick HKKP fashion shoot with Roosevelt the driver (yeah boyeeeee!) Marko, Berlin the translator , and Alex.  Check out the tees.  I was even wearing mine behind the camera

Goodbye Michel Jean

We sadly had to say goodbye to our guide/translator of three weeks Michel Jean.  We’d been through a lot together – a few drunken vodou nights, his wife leaving him, about 12 screenings, and plenty of funny Haitian moments.  He was great and nothing would have been possible without him.  Cheers Michel.  We leave Jacmel and head to Leogane – about 2 hours north.

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!

Ghede – Day of the Dead

This week it was Ghede, the celebrations around the vodou day of the dead, and on Wednesday night we went to a vodou ceremony.  Back in January HKKP put on a night of films about Vodou at the Cube Cinema as a fund raiser for this trip – and also to try and  counter balance the misleading image of vodou that has been spread by Hollywood mythology around the world. In fact vodou must be one of the misrepresented religions in the world…

Our experience on Wednesday was one of social celebration with drumming, singing, dancing… (and quite a lot of rum).

If you’re interested in finding out more about Vodou, two films we’d recommend searching out are Laurence Magloire’s Des Hommes et Dieux, and Maya Derren / Teiji Ito’s Divine Horsemen.