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The recent devastation casued by the Haitian earthquake has brought us more heartbreaking viewing, and the medium of film has been at its most crucial. Amidst the cataclysm, a group of young Haitians have taken it upon themselves to act as the local voice. At Haiti’s only film school, Ciné Institute which resides in the small seaside town of Jacmel, students went to work instantly with hand-held cameras to capture the devastation. Their powerful testimonals to the wrecked city have been brought by CNN, who broadcast them around the globe, bringing to the world personal and unique perspectives of the earthquake and its devastating effects. These short docs make up a rich document of the disaster with footage of the aftermath and the recent erratic aid efforts.

The Ciné Institute at work

The voice, eyes and camera of disaster survivors were powerfully displayed in the Oscar-nominated Trouble the Water. The doc that included footage shot by Kimberly Rivers Roberts, who, with her husband Scott, was trapped in her home in New Orleans by the deadly floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Like the work of the Ciné Institute, this is not a story shot by the news teams, only taking with them a glimpse of the reality on the ground. A glimpse that that the mainstream media will continue to cut and paste, further obscuring the truth. Instead, these mini-docs are made by the very eye witnesses, who have lost family and homes in disaster. Coverage by the Ciné Institute and Trouble the Water team has been a lesson in the ways grassroots journalism succeeds where the mainstream fails.

As Avatar’s synthetic world reigns supreme in the western multiplexes, the Ciné Institute have reaffirmed the importance of human storytelling: ordinary people taking up cameras in times of crisis. Take a look at their videos here.