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
So we’re now in Leogane, staying with volunteer org – All Hands. We sorted out workshops in a local school straight away. Alex and Marko got animating and I helped some kids make a little film about their school.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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!
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.
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-
