Going through my video files, I recently came across some video clips. Last year I made a trip to my homeland, Haiti. It was devastating seeing what was left of it. It’s been a while since I’ve visited, and I was in distress when I saw how the land stood still.
The story behind this video is basically an expression of my experience there. The poverty as we all know is all over the world, but some places worse than others. The country has suffered many tragic moments, the latest; earthquake of January 12, 2010. It was a heartbreaking day for millions of people. The graphic images brought tears to many eyes. It’s a thought that I would like leave out, but it’s unattainable.
I remembered poverty; corruption, mostly from law enforcers in Haiti while I was being raised there. The clips in this short video are a combination of my own videos I took while I was there last year, and the rest that displays violence were downloaded from YouTube.
The idea behind this video is to show the past. What it was for me then, and what it is for me now. Although I didn’t really leave poverty and corruption, but the level of poverty and corruption there and here in the U.S. for me is a different type of struggle.
I chose this song because it speaks for the video. Artists Damian “Junior Gong” Marley and rapper NAS did a great job with this song. The story behind the song is explaining a specific struggle and finding a way out of that struggle to “Zion”. Biblicaly, Zion appears in the book of Psalms and is suppose represent Jerusalem. According to most, it is the most holy and peaceful place on earth
I used the software “Video pad” to help me illustrate this story. I brought the clips together, cut and trimmed what I needed to make the story come to life along with the song.
Towards the end of the video, I thought it would be best if I ended with clips of me here in the U.S. Some of those clips were shot in the Catskills, upstate NY. The end simply shows the peaceful palace away from the corruption. It’s not Zion, but it is a place where I feel I can think clearly and not worry about the past.