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

Get down! …  in Cite Soleil Given that we’re currently the coolest children’s mobile cinema on the planet it’s not surprising that we have some of the funkiest dancers in the world in our audience –  as you can see here…TURN IT UP!

playlist:

daytime –  300% Dynamite, Souljazz reggae compilation
evening – Youssou N’Dour’s theme song to Kirikou et La Sorciere

At the moment we’re doing two nights of screenings in Cite Soleil.  It’s not the safest neightbourhood of Port au Prince but we’re in good company as we’re at a small camp at L’Athletique d’Haitistyle, a sports club set up by activist and all round star Bobby Duval to give local kids somewhere positive to focus their energy.
As always we’ve found the audiences in the hardest hit communities are some of the most appreciative film fans and most fun to hang out with …

On Saturday we did a joint show with Kid’s Kino friends Thomas, Luxon and Stanley from the Haitian comedy company Les Rescapes (The Survivors). Both Stanley and Luxon are living in camps in Delmar – not so far from tonight’s gig.

Les Rescapes perform silent slapstick and farce influenced by Charlie Chaplin, Mr. Bean and Benny Hill.  They did a ten minute sketch before the screening and then we showed three of the their short films between the other films of the evening…

LES RESCAPES ET LE BABY SITTER
envoyé par digiprod. – Cliquez pour voir plus de vidéos marrantes.

At the moment they’re working on new material based around the earthquake, which will be amazing… we’ll feature it on the blog when it comes out. The screening was in the grounds of the Belgian Consulate – there’s a camp there on what was formerly the tennis courts, about 800 people are living there and in the adjoining area. The consul’s mother, the irrepressible Madame Francoise has been running children’s play schools there every day. During the two afternoons we were there we did video workshops with some of the children – you can see a couple of clips in the posting below…
* the survivors have lost everything … except their sense of humour

Emanuelle Daylais, 8

Simon Zanetty, 11

On Wednesday  our generator broke down sparking some panic as all of our equipment was dependent on it.

So as we we’re having a break in a hotel we hauled it over to a friends house Craig Lapp and with his help and tools we managed to clean her out and get her working again. The problem was bad fuel bought from Texaco which days before had killed Craig’s motorbike.

Craig Lapp giving the geni a once over

After stripping the geni down and cleaning the fuel tank, pipes, filter, pump she was back in service….though we had a few nuts and bolts left over(?) On Wednesday we gave it a full test as we had a screening and it seemed to work perfectly.

A Day (and evening) in Leogane

After a hot morning in the back of the pick up truck trying to find a working ATM  (it turned out the Visa connection to Haiti is down), we drove over to Leogane. Leogane’s a country town about an hour from Port au Prince and was at the epicentre of the earthquake – it sustained some of the most severe damage.

Driving around the town we bumped into some international volunteers from Hands On Disaster Relief…  and went over to their base to say hello.  Behind their compound there’s a big field with the first cows we’ve seen in Haiti grazing it.  On either side of the field there are people living in tent camps so we decided to do a screening that evening…

We started setting up late afternoon and  children quickly started appearing from both camps… by the time it actually god dark and we started the films we had a good crowd of about 150 – mostly children.

We're going to go back to Leogane in a weeks time and stay for a few days.

Downtown Leogane

Sat 1st & Sun 2nd May/ 1pm-5pm/ £1 + donations – SPIKE ISLAND OPEN DAY, BRISTOL 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

On Wednesday we went over to a little school where our friend Will Le Le works. Since the earthquake all the schools are shut,  but this one takes place under some tarpaulins in a yard and is run by volunteers – mostly local young people.  The children come from the camps in the neighbourhood…This was our first experience where the audience have just been kids – at the camps and even at the hospital on Tuesday night we usually end up with the little kids at the front, the older kids behind them …  and then the majority of the audience ends up being adults standing at the back. Here the children definitely felt like they owned the space, and there was a total party atmosphere… Here’s how the evening went – First we took some photos of the audience and projected them … to huge cheers and laughter. And then …

The Magic Horse- one of Lotte Reineger’s magical silhouette films  –   A fairytale set  in Baghdad.   The English dialogue was translated by John Adam on the mic.Best moment of improvised dialogue (in Kreyol) – ” then the prince met the princess..ok, in a moment the princess is going to arrive…  hey everyone Relax!  she’s going to appear in a moment ! ”

Ti Sentaniz – Kreyol language animation about a little girl who is an unpaid servant for an abusive rich woman and her daughter. Sadly not a fairytale ;  this form of modern domestic slavery is not uncommon in Haiti. Written and narrated by the late great Haitian poet, humourist and raconteurMaurice Sixto, We can’t find it on the internet, but there’s a “Making of …here

Message from Josh Sundquist, the Canadian paralympic ski racer, who lost one of his legs to cancer at the age of 10 This is a great video (made by the mighty Sinema anba Zetwal) pledging solidarity with Haitian kids who have undergone amputations since the earthquake, and shows Canadian and Haitian amputees playing football …

you can see the Kreyol language version that we show … here
La Belle Fille et Le Sorciere One of our tried and tested audience favourites. (lots of magicians and sorcerers in tonight’s programme… and finally the main feature – Kirikou et la Sorcier. Michel Ocelot’s animated feature film based on an West African folk tale. We’d recommend this film to everyone, whatever your age is…  But then the screen went….generator problems…. we got it going a couple of times…..  but after the third time the generator cut out and the  projector stopped we had to call it a night.The kids didn’t seem phased by this though… an impromptu song and dance session got going,you can hear a bit of it here –party2 and everyone went off smiling and laughing into the night…