Jacmel Film School survives to film Earthquake aftermath

I'm desolated to report that despite the comparative optimism of a message from Jacmel indicating that all students of Sine-Lekol had survived the earthquake, one of my students, Rose Laure Charles, is unaccounted for. She is last known to have left Jacmel on the Tuesday of the earthquake to go to Port au Prince for a doctor's appointment. So far there is no further word.

Nonetheless, there is some good news from Jacmel. The students of the Sine-Lekol, using whatever equipment they could salvage from the wreckage of their facility, have been filming and are providing the only substantive news I have seen coming out of the decimated and now-isolated town.

Here is a report from Simeus Fritzner:

Report from student: Fritzner Simeus from Jacmel from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

And one from Keziah Jean:

The Victims In Jacmel : Keziah Jean reports from the field (subtitled) from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

The next generation of Haitian cinéastes...

The short films, or, perhaps more correctly, scenes, I wrote about a few posts ago have been uploaded to youtube by the Sine Lekol Jakmel, via satellite internet, with subtitles.

The original assignment was simple, and open-ended, and intended to suggest a few situations with interesting or difficult location sound possibilities. I told the students to film a conversation in which a couple are going through a breakup, a scene at the beach, and a scene in Jacmel's town square. I gave no other real guidelines, and let the students fend for themselves.

We shot in two teams. Once the films were in the can, we watched the roughly edited footage together as a class, and discussed possible audio additions that might be mixed into the location sound to underline the emotions of the characters, smooth over problems in the dialog recording, or enhance the sense of place. The teams then went out again on their own to collect them.





I'm very impressed!

Professor Fleming

And I don't mean my father, my sister, my brother or any of those other Fleming scholars....

I don't think it is hyperbole for me to say that the last week, spent in Jacmel teaching young Haitians the basics of sound recording, and the potential uses of sound in filmmaking, is perhaps the most fulfilling time I've spent all year. The class was eager to learn and even more eager to get out in the streets and get some videotape moving through the cameras, and the five day stretch of eight-hour seminars flashed by in what now seems like no time at all.

Day one in sound studies at Sine Lekol Jakmel: the class, stunned into silence and rapt attention by the red-faced, corpulent bundle of perspiration who was gesticulating wildly in front of them.

To get some in-the-room practical experience I made the students take turns booming me while listening to the results. Quite a shift from the usual day at the office, which I spend trying to be really quiet, while wandering around holding a stick over other people's heads.

I know, now I look like a cinematographer. I could get kicked out of the sound union for doing that whole "frame" thing with my fingers.

Ebby listens carefully.

Looking at these photos, I get the impression that I must be one of those people who really like to hear themselves talk.

It's a wrap! Heading back to the school HQ, after shooting a scene at the Florita Bar. The oceanside blocks of Jacmel are full of the glorious colonnaded double-height warehouses you see lining this street.

Group One.

and Group Two. The other "blanc" in these pictures is Andrew Bigosinski, who helped immeasurably to make the week a pleasant, smooth and fruitful experience. He will be teaching editing in a subsequent installment of this intensive course.

Au Revoir. Here I'm explaining our project and making farewell remarks to the entire student body, their friends, and families, at our celebratory screening of the week's work, on Friday night. I hope I'll be invited back soon!

The films my two groups of students made will soon be available for online viewing, and I'll post a link then.

Photo credits: most by Silvio Dieudonné, except for the one of the posse walking through the streets of Jacmel, which is by Olivier (Silvio is in that picture, in the bright blue shirt, third from the left).