In Disaster Haiti, premiering on TVO January 11, 12 and 13, Toronto-based filmmaker Nadine Pequeneza tracks the Red Cross relief effort following the devastating earthquake that wrecked the country in January 2010 leaving 250,000 dead, 300,000 injured, 1.7 million homeless. It’s a hard film to watch owing to gruesome scenes of dead bodies, maimed children and even violence as survivors fight for aid.
But Pequeneza defends her editing choices noting that “the images on television news at the time were even more graphic. There was a lot of stuff we did not put in the film, far more awful scenes. Bodies were piled up in heaps and they couldn’t be moved because the roads were closed; the rescue and aid workers were concerned with the living, the dead were not a priority initially.”
Disaster Haiti (PTV Productions) was a tough project to sell, not because the content was difficult but because when the film was being pitched the disaster hadn’t happened yet. Pequeneza, left, began negotiating access with the Red Cross two years prior to the Haitian catastrophe: the film crew was on standby for six months waiting for disaster to strike, somewhere, anywhere.
“We went to broadcasters in the States, in Canada, in Europe and the U.K.,” remembers the director. “They all thought it was a great idea but nobody wanted to take the risk. There were a lot of unknowns and broadcasters don’t like unknowns.”
As much as Pequeneza and her team tried to prepare themselves for the mission, they really had little understanding of the physical and emotional hardships that awaited them. The team was on the ground in Haiti within 36 hours of the earthquake: they filmed for a month, then went back in June for 15 days and again in August for another 15 days.
“It was hard to go back the second time and even harder the third time,” confirms the director. “When you’re there in the first weeks and months after a disaster there are so many people and so much money pouring into the country, the mood is very hopeful, people are really pulling together and it feels like incredible feats can be accomplished. But six months on, the picture is very different; then all the complexities of politics start to get in the way.
“We’re talking about billions of dollars being funneled into the country and there are the questions of who’s going to control it, who’s going to benefit from it and what is Haiti going to look like five years down the road?”
At the heart of the film are the aid workers, above, who dedicate themselves to saving lives in one catastrophic event after another around the globe. “I think they’re incredible,” says the director of the Red Cross workers. “They’re completely committed, completely.”
Pequenza and I met to talk about her documentary at The Common coffee shop around the corner from her home off College Street West. I observed that her film crew was required to endure conditions every bit as hard as the relief workers, to which she responded, “Yes, but I’m here right now having coffee with you and Hossam (Eisharkawai, head of the Red Cross field hospital) is back in Haiti. These guys have been doing this for decades, 15, 20 years and they just go from one disaster to the next. Everybody I was with in Haiti went on to Chile after that because there was an earthquake there a few months later. And then they went to help with the floods in Pakistan, they’ve been to the tsunami in Indonesia . . . all of these things have happened since Haiti and that’s all they do, they go from one disaster to the next.”
Did Pequeneza and her team ever feel like they were getting in the way as they documented the mayhem? “All of us who went down on the crew had done observational documentaries before and the whole point of that form is to observe and not get in the way, not to direct, not to implicate yourself in a scene; just stand back and observe. There were a couple of instances where they said, ‘I need some space here, get that camera out of my face.’ But ultimately, they commended us for managing to be around and not be a nuisance.”
As we wrap up our conversation I ask Pequeneza what she hopes viewers will take away from her film. “I want people to understand that disasters are directly related to poverty and that the less developed and more impoverished a community is, the more vulnerable it is to natural disasters. So if people really want to make a difference money has to be invested before, not after a disaster happens. That’s another reason we wanted to go back six months later to check in on progress because media attention is huge in the days after a disaster but a couple of weeks later nobody’s interested.”
If you want to know more, if you want to be moved, don’t miss this searing documentary series on TVO January 11, 12 and 13 at 9 pm; the program airs again on the station January 26 and February 2 and 9, also at 9 pm.
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Hi Christopher, very good article. I had the chance to attend a private screening of this documentary and it really gives a unique perspective on the actions of the Red Cross and the disaster in Haiti.
Thanks,
Jean-Philippe