Brooklyn Film Community Helps Ciné Institute in Jacmel, Haiti
Friday, January 29th, 2010I think it’s pretty amazing how so many people have rallied to help Haiti’s only film school continue to tell important stories in the wake of the earthquake. On January 22nd a crew of film peeps got together at Eastern Effects in Brooklyn to load a shipping container with film equipment and humanitarian supplies to send to Jacmel.
This makes me smile.
Keep up to date with the school’s news and videos: www.cineinstitute.com/news/
You can become a fan of the Institute on Facebook too.
Here’s a message from filmmaker Michelange Quay (Eat, For This Is My Body):
While the catastrophe in Haiti deepens in range and scope each day and relief help inches its way to the struggling survivors, my own students at Haiti’s only film school, CINE INSTITUTE have been filming since Day 0 – showing Haitian people organizing to survive, in the way they always have in face of extreme poverty and neglect, with dignity, patience, teamwork and intelligence.
They’ve lost EVERYTHING – families, homes, their school, their dreams, their future, but their first instinct was to grab the one or two cameras still functioning and get out into the barely recognizable streets, looking for stories – human stories. It’s a stark contrast to the “mad famished negroes running amuck” story that the mainstream media seems to cut-and-paste, and their dedication to bearing witness with their cameras, proves that we filmmakers have a different function than that of the doctors, engineers, etc., in such a crucial moment.
Our work as filmmakers serves a basic, vital, human need, a tangibly spiritual need – to really be seen, to be heard. Please spread the word in our profession about the work of these students at the dawn of carreers that seem dim, but that burn bright right now in an hour of colossal need. Watch their stories.
http://www.cineinstitute.com/news/
peace, solidarity
michelange
