‘Inside Disaster’ shooting in Haiti

We are all of course terribly sad about the tragedy in Haiti – our family not the least since we have a daughter who lived her first years in Port au Prince. I of course encourage everyone to contribute money to the relief and reconstruction efforts.

Among the many film crews now in Port au Prince there is one which has a particularly interesting documentary mandate: Inside Disaster. Conceptually planned and negotiated well ahead of the Haiti earthquake, it will allow for both complexity and follow-up.

Katie McKenna who is the Internet director for PTV Productions told me about the origin of this project:

“Nadine Pequeneza has been developing the idea of, and negotiating access to the Red Cross Field Assessment and Coordination Team (FACT), for over a year. She’s producing it with Andrea Nemtin and Ian Dunbar at PTV Productions (and where I’m now working as Internet Director, developing the company’s plan for the new “multi-platform” doc funding universe). The series will air on TVO and Canal D in 2011 and is being distributed by ITV Studios Global Entertainment. It’s being produced with TVO, ITVS Global Entertainment, Canal D, ACCESS, SCN and ichannel, with support from CIDA and the CTF.”

Katie McKenna

“The website that is up now is Phase 1 of the overall web plan for the film – we’re developing a much larger version that will launch alongside the doc at the end of this year. It’s intended to be a community and educational resource for people interested in the world of humanitarian aid – we’ll have debates, data visualization materials and a glossary, all illustrated with photos and video from this website and of course, the film. To encourage redistribution, we’re taking the creative commons, “open” approach to all the current content on the site and using tools like Flickr and YouTube for distribution. Our site is currently funded by TVO, Bell Fund (Development funding), and the CTF Digital Fund.”

Some people have raised questions about the impact of numerous camera crews using precious resources in Haiti presently.
On the DOC Canada discussion forum, Katie had this to say:

“the bigger picture problem is that the huge influx of international media creates an artificially inflated market for everyday supplies – gasoline, fixers, cars, bottled water, etc. The “internationals” will pay whatever it takes, and that pushes prices for essentials out of the reach of everyday people. Yesterday’s NYT is reporting that a bottle of water in the downtown markets is now going for $6 – prices like that force people to be dependent on aid, even if they have the resources to be self-sufficient in a “normal” Haitian economy.

So, that is definitely a legit criticism that can apply to our team and the rest of the media down there.

The flipside, of course, is that the huge media presence is driving a record amount of donations into aid organizations; these donations matter, and their numbers are directly tied to media coverage. Our team is going to be there until February 16th, long after most of the international media has gone home.

They’re also going back in six months to film a follow-up on the recovery. And then when the film is released early next year – likely one year after the event – it will bring Haiti and its reconstruction back into the spotlight in Canada, and hopefully internationally.

So: we’re primarily storytellers, not fundraisers, but we’re glad when the two get tied together (which is why we have a IFRC donation button on our site).”

The documentary on the Haiti EQ: http://insidedisaster.com/
Twitter: @insidedisaster
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/ydkerkf

Thanks to Jessica Berglund for the help with this blog post.