The movie screen rose like an apparition, in the middle of a tent city, on a hillside veined by rain. Under the Sky, the title card said, and sure enough, a soap opera about a family living right here suddenly appeared.
Love and scandal followed, but the episode focused mainly on one issue: con men in the camps. After a slick villain in dark sunglasses tried to sell registration cards to the show’s main characters, claiming falsely that they could be redeemed for cash, officials with the International Organization for Migration suddenly appeared to save the day.
“That guy was a thief,” said the patriarch of the family, played by one of Haiti’s most famous actors, Lionel Benjamin. “I knew he was trouble.”
First, Haitians received food and shelter; now the moving image has joined the humanitarian response. All over this rattled capital city, Port-au-Prince, outdoor screens are popping up, as a handful of organizations race to produce programming that entertains and informs the hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in camps without TVs or radios.
The soap opera, financed by the UN and its partners, for instance, is part of a 16-episode series shown three nights a week in 16 camps, along with music videos and Haitian movies. Several other groups — including FilmAid, founded by Caroline Baron, who produced Capote — are also setting up programs to show movies and train Haitians to shoot their own. And while the result may be amusing, the impetus was serious: Organizers say the programs will fill in for a government that has failed to communicate effectively, letting rumors and schemes spread among those most desperate for help.
“We need to get them good information, not disinformation,” said David Wimhurst, the UN spokesman in Haiti. “We have a lot to tell them.”
Coming episodes of the soap opera will deal with how to better secure the tents and tarpaulins that many here now call home. There may also be lessons on mosquito nets and vaccinations; on sanitation; and on how to stay safe in the sprawling camps.
Each episode cost about US$6,000 to produce, and Wimhurst said the goal was to create something useful and funny. Baron, who has been screening films at refugee camps in Africa for 11 years, said the best humanitarian programming included fun and function, with a local face.
“It’s very important that the films we make for the community are by the community so they are readily and easily understood,” she said in an interview after meeting with Haitian officials. “No matter what the subject matter, people enjoy themselves because they can relate to the people on the screen.”
Haiti has 1,322 camps, with more than 10,000 tents and 564,000 tarpaulins covering more than 1 million people, according to migration officials.
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