This little bit of video was supposed to go with an earlier post but this is the first time we’ve had a fast enough internet connection to upload it…
The little girl on the left reminds us a lot of the Haiti Kids Kino project manager Esther May Campbell 😉
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”]
A lot of people in Haiti speak a little French, which is why we show films in French – but Kreyol is the real language of the people and definitely the language of our audience.The structure of the language comes from West African languages while most of the words come from French.Kreyol is written phonetically, but for a French accent, so we’ve invented our own phonetic spellings –
Children’s Cinema Sinema Pou Timoun
How are you? Comment oo yay?
Fine Mwa byen
My name is … Mwa rer-lay….
What’s your name? Ki jan oo rer-lay?
Do you have…? Oo ganya… ?
Where is…. ? Coo-tay … ?
Bral appren Kreyol. I’m going to learn Kreyol.<
Kids invade our pickup truck at the camp on Route Delmar 33 – Saturday afternoon Sergo our driver and team member is in the top left photo
After being rained off at Delmar 33 on Thursday, we went back and did a show on Saturday. As the camp is on a football pitch, we showed Ballon D’Or a film about a boy from a rural village in Guinea who wants to become the best footballer in Africa.
HKKP is featured in the Guardian on Monday, 22nd March 2010.
The article can be read online here.
Our fourth screening was at a camp on Route Delmar 33… 3000 people living in incredibly tightly packed tents on a football pitch.
Early arrivals
The third short film of the screening was “Hedgehog in the Fog” made in 1974 by Yuri Norstein (the Tarkovsky of children’s animation!). Have a look – you won’t be disappointed. As the end credits rolled the rain came down, hard, the crowd of about 150 ran for cover, and we had to abandon the screening, and save the equipment.
Projector taking shelter
Screen in the rain
Football pitch turning into a lake
This camp is one of the most organised we’ve seen but after half an hour many of the tents were flooded. Everybody we meet here is talking about the coming Rainy Season and what it will mean. No one seems to be building proper drainage ditches or latrines. When the real rains come sewage will overflow, disease will follow and life in the tent cities and camps which is already hard will become unbearable. I asked Joseph Hillel a Haitian/ French Canadian volunteer (see previous entry) why no one is preparing for the rainy season? Because people want to believe the camps are temporary. The owner of an athletic club, for example, doesn’t want drainage ditches and latrines dug into his football pitch. How can people think the camps are temporary? Because huge new re-settlement camps with facilities are being built on the outskirts of the city. We drove past one near the airport which is supposed to re-house people from the central Champs Des Mars area. But why aren’t people moving out there? Because people who have lived all their lives in a certain neighbourhood don’t want to be moved to a piece of wasteland outside the city.
Tomorrow we’re going to go shopping for some kind of shelter for the projector and soundsystem.
This morning after looking at potential venues in a camp in the Delmar neighborhood of Port au Prince, I went with Joseph Hillel a Haitian/ French Canadian volunteer with CECI to Ranches de Jeunesse. The Ranch used to be Ranch Duvalier – property of father and son dictators Papa and Baby Doc Duvlier, but now its become a centre for youth projects. In his normal life Joseph is a documentary film maker, and he was doing an interview with Daniel Prudent a Haitian architect and educator who specialises in using sustainable materials. Under his supervision young people were doing the preparation for a monument to the children that died in the earthquake – which will
be constructed out of recycled plastic bottles filled with compacted earth.
Last week Eric of Sinema Anba Letwal, showed us where the hardware shops are to buy ropes and a 2kg hammer for the Kino. The conversation turned to a meeting Eric had just attended where some Canadians were proposing to import huge quantities of plastic panels for the reconstruction of basic housing. Eric was deeply angry about this – the idea of building plastic houses when there are huge amounts of local materials that can be used…”We might be poor in Haiti, but we’re not stupid, OK?”
Last night we took the Kino with Laurence and her crew to the funeral of Denis in the country town of Cabaret. Denis was one of the incredible interviewees in Laurence Magloire and Anne Lescont’s 2006 documentary Hommes Et Des Dieux which looks at the place gay men in the voudou religion. Being gay is not easy in Haitian society, but because vodou is a non- hierarchical religion there is a place for gay people to practice and celebrate within it. We projected the documentary to about 80 of Denis’s friends, family and neighbours in a tiny packed yard, and a lot of the participants in the documentary were in the audience. It’s rare for Kreol speaking Haitians to see themselves represented on screen, let alone to see the gay community represented on screen – so being in involved in this screening was an amazing and moving evening…
Amidst heat, humidity, dust and mosquitoes, Marko and Dave have been projecting to audiences ranging from 300-500 people each evening. There’s more demand than we can supply and so the HAITI KIDS KINO PROJECT is being welcomed with open arms.French language films are going down great — Ballon d’Or from Guinea, The Red Balloon and Kirikou Et La Sorciere. Slapstick and comedy work very well too… our very first screening was in a small camp in Cite de Soleil in Port au Prince; the programme was – La Belle Fille et Le Sorciere (short – France) Shaun the Sheep – Kite (short – UK) Hedgehog In the Fog (short – Russia) Ballon D’Or (feature – Guinea).. and the crowd loved it! One of the highlights was the whole audience singing and clapping along to Vic Reeves singing the theme to Shaun the Sheep. We’re hoping to continue this great work after Marko and Dave’s return and rainy season passes. Please get in touch if you’d like to be involved in any way.
photos – Ian Rosenberger/Dave
