This Thursday, July 21, the International Federation of Red Crosses, the Canadian Red Cross and REEL Causes jointly present the documentary
Inside Disaster: Haiti at the Vancity Theatre in Vancouver.
Inside Disaster: Haiti is a groundbreaking documentary by Nadine Pequeneza capturing the response of the
International Federation of Red Crosses (IFRC) as they are faced with responding to the single biggest disaster in human history at the time. Given that the quake rocked with 59 aftershocks in a country rife with abject poverty, the emergency response team put together by the IFRC would have to be considerably more prepared with logistics and emergency responses than usual. For instance, in other common disasters, Emergency Response Units (ERU) are prepared and deployed at the site itself. Haiti was such a catastrophe that the IFRC dispatched 10 ERUs
before they even arrived in Port-au-Prince. While the word “epic” has been used to describe frivolous entertainments with aspirations of greatness, the word “epic” in the context of this operation lends the term weighty gravity and real consequence.
Understanding the state of the nation, the documentary crew prepared themselves for arrival as if they were in the middle of a war itself. This is gritty, down-to-the-bone filmmaking, capturing real human drama, unmanufactured unlike “reality” television, in real time. The crew (and everyone else working in relief, for that matter) had no luxury accommodations and understood that such conventions like leisurely paced editing and careful lighting orchestrations would have been logistically impossible while they bore witness to the horrors of the aftermath. In other words, this was not a working holiday for bored trust-fund babies “doing” an internship because it looks good on a resume. Everyone who came aboard to work believed in the project and was committed to documenting the efforts of the IFRC to raise awareness of the disaster and still-ongoing humanitarian efforts.
