2e SEMAINE

2e Semaine - Bonjor tut moon- is the phonetic Haitian Creole version of Bonjour tout le monde. Yes, I’m picking up the easy phrases – using them when I can, as this one, at the beginning of my classes. The mother tongue here is Creole although they all learn French in high school and speak it with general fluency. And French is the language of our school although there are mandatory English classes once a week for all students. This week was all about camera angles and the dreaded “lines of axis” which every young filmmaker everywhere must learn – because breaking the line of axis when shooting makes you the laughing stock – like having a figure on screen looking at someone off screen – when the person off screen is seen in their own close up they appear on the wrong part of the screen in relation to the other. Or breaking the axis covering a person going for a walk- walking in one direction in one shot, then walking in the opposite direction in the second shot. I took a group of seven students with three cameras to an amazing hole in the rock at ground level that descends about twenty metres through a vertical cave and eventually opens to the giant boulders at sea level. I placed one camera with two operators at ground level, one in the middle of the cave and another at sea level- each not seeing the other. The exercise was to follow an action from ground level- another student who was our actor was to descend the cave all the way to the sea level – camera one would cover his entrance to the cave, camera two would pick him up at mid level and pan with him as he reached the bottom, and camera three would pick him up as he emerged from the cave and walked away. The whole theory of lines of axis was thrown on its ear because the figure was descending, turning corners, going in circles, until he reached the bottom – creating new axes with every move. At first, the students were confused about how the lines of axis would actually play out but when they saw how the three cameras covered the action in a seemingly seamless manner they couldn’t wait to cut the three cameras together in an edited sequence. (Well done) Bon baguy!

I’m discovering the surrounding area of the Ciné Institute. Went to Jacmel last weekend to an exposition at the Alliance Française (French gov’s cultural offices abroad- there’s one in Toronto and all around the world) featuring a project headed by a well-known and esteemed Haitian artist, Ronald Mevs with nine other artists. He acquired an out-of-commission plane, a twenty-seater, boiled down the aluminum of the plane in a local foundry, and with fellow artists, cast multiple shapes and sculptures from the molten liquid. The exposition was a result of this recycling. Having spoken to M. Mevs a few times since, I’ve found out that his next big project is to boil down the glass from some ruined buildings. He is an interesting man, speaks many languages, and whose charming wife is half Quebecoise. He was brought in to teach a class in “Ethics” at the Ciné Institute and I have asked him to be a guest speaker in my “Aesthetics” class next week to which he kindly obliged. Here in Haiti contrasts abound. I went on a small excursion with my colleague Isaac to watch a soccer match, an il classico between Real Madrid and Barcelona, two very popular teams here. I kept asking him where we were going thinking it must be a bar with satellite TV but he wanted to keep me in the dark. We stopped the moto by the side of the main road, went around the back of a small store where he gave a few gourde (Haitian money) to a young girl who was seemingly hanging around (apparently the entry fee for the football match) – we walked further off the road on a rough path, through ditches, past houses and small yards with people hanging laundry to a large bamboo hut. There a world opened to our eyes- about eighty young men, a few girlfriends, some fathers with their kids sitting in chairs or on the dirt crammed into the hut- all watching the classico on a large flatscreen. The din in the room was almost overwhelming- every move on the pitch provoked shouting and endless jabbering- eruptions followed each of the four goals in the match. Luckily it ended in a tie. Following the match we went back to the main road and drove to another more auspicious locale, the Hotel Cyvadier, a resort hotel nestled in a seaside cove where we had a rum sour on a hilltop bar overlooking the sandy beach of the bay. This landscaped compound of palms and exotic flowers with its hidden rows of two storey rooms and suites and with its prominent resto bar – was my first view of pure luxury amidst the indescribable rest that is Haiti.

I am getting around on my new moto. Every day I practice – going through the gates of our compound up to the main road about 2km away- through farmer’s fields, over small creeks, on rough gravel and rock, past families bathing under a single hose, cows tied to a branch, goats running forward and behind, a mule carrying bags of charcoal with its young proprietor; a boy of 12 without a shirt or shoes, past several partially built houses the result I’m told, of Haitians abroad sending money home but never finishing their projects, past a group of machete men cutting palm branches then burning them in roadside fires. They all watch the white man come and go in twenty minute intervals repeated two or three times as if going in circles. I have ventured on the main road getting up to fourth gear and into the mêlée of fumes and chaotic traffic and would venture further except I have no papers for the moto yet, neither permit to drive it, neither a license plate – so I must be prudent. All these things will be figured out soon by an associate of the school, a colourful character called Gazol (as in gas oil) who brokered the deal to buy the moto in the first place and has promised to take me through official channels. This past week one of the students found and killed a millipede about 6-8 inches long. I didn’t see it but was told that this fearful cousin of the little creatures you find under a rock in Canada have a lethal sting – luckily they hang out in the grass and brush and not in dark corners of the stucco and tile that comprise our bungalows. Last night at around 4am I heard distant drumming, an indication I was told, that the voodoo season is upon us.