Haitian
Slave Children: Forgotten Angels
A
Film by Ron Becks & Young Man Kang
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WINNER |
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WINNER |
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WORLD
PREMIERE
7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Raleigh Studios, Chaplin Theatre
650 N. Bronson Avenue (Melrose & Van Ness)
Hollywood, CA
Press Release
We
are proud to announce the World Premiere of an explosicely revealing film
documentary on the heart-wrenching subject of children abandoned to the
streets of Haiti. This is a most unique expose' of the world's dirty little
secret'
--modern day child slavery, severe abuse and the resulting loss of childhood
for thousands of children.
Director/producer/writer
Ron Becks and
Director/cinematographer/Editor
Young Man Kang
combined their award-winning talents to creat this
phenomenal documentary to draw attention to the plight of the street
kids of Haiti. The film has a soundtrack of authentic Haitian roots music
by the Grammy-nominated group, Boukman Eksperyans.
Executive
producer Jeanette Lawrence, of Huntington Beach, California,
was inspired to fund this effort after becoming aware of the life-endangering
work being performed by a courageous rescue team, headed by an America
from Corpus Christi, Texas, Michael Brewer, R.N.
Mr, Brewer is the compassionate Director of Haitian Street Kids, Inc.,
(a non-
profit organization) which has opened an orphanage, Family Circle Home
for
Boys, in Port au Prince. There the children are sheltered in a secure,
loving
environment where they are provided the opportunity to both enjoy their
childhood and to get a quality education to help prepare them for the
future.
Contact: Jeanette Lawrence, Fundraising/PR
Haitian Street Kids, Inc.
18051 Joyful Lane #101
Huntington Beach, CA 92648
email: jeanette@rescueteam.com
Haiti 2001
Haitian Street Kids 2001
Haiti Visit. April, 2001
(left to right)Ron Becks, Jeanette Lawrence, Lolo Sheodore, Young Man
Kang, Michael Brewa
Haiti Visit. April, 2001
Haiti Project Music Composer, Lolo's Album cover
Review
LA Weekly
Oct 5-11. 2001
Directed by Ron Becks/ Young Man Kang, Haitian Slave Children:
Forgotten Angels explores the crisis
faced by an estimated 300,000 children living on the streets of Haiti,
many of them traded as slaves,
all of them facing constant peril and little chance of getting out.
Most of the children have few or even no clothes, and some don't even
know their own names.
Through the documentary, shot on video by cinematographer Young Man Kang,
is somewhat
crudely made, the directness of its message is unmistakable.
Only a scant 25 minutes long, it still packs a wallop as it tours the
minimal resources available
to those children. Watching Michael Brewer, the American registered nurse
who founded
a program to get kids off the streets, begin to sob as he catalogs the
injuries sustained by a
group of street kids, or the mixture of emotions he conveys in helping
one child while unable
to assist countless more, will get to even the most hardhearted on a visceral
level.
This screening is both a premiere and a benefit for the Family Circle
Home, Brewer's
organization struggling to assist some of the children.
(Raleigh Studios, Chaplin Theatre, 650 N. Bronson Ave,: Wed., Oct. 10,
7:30p.m.
714-847-0627, www.haitianstreetkids.com)
-Mark Olsen-
FILM THREAT
HAITIAN SLAVE CHILDREN: FORGOTTEN ANGELS
by Phil Hall
(2002-08-26)
* * * 1/2
2001, Un-rated, 25 Minutes, Haitian Street Kids Inc./FilmGod Studios
An estimated
300,000 children are abandoned to live and fend for themselves on the
streets of Haiti.
Many of these children are sold into slavery and suffer from severe abuse
resulting in disfigurement and death.
"Haitian
Slave Children: Forgotten Angels" is a short documentary on the important
work undertaken
by Michael Brewer, an American registered nurse who runs the Haitian Street
Kids Inc. non-profit organization in Port Au Prince, the Haitian capital.
Brewer's organization has created the Family Circle Home for Boys,
which provides Haiti's abandoned children with the rare opportunity to
enjoy shelter, food and security.
This
film, created by Ron Becks and Young Man Kang, details several individual
cases of abandoned children
whose young lives have been tortured with unparalleled cruelty and pain.
One boy had an automobile run over his legs while he was sleeping on street;
the driver refused to aid the child, who
miraculously survived without loss of limbs.
Other boys were less fortunate, having had fingers smashed and eventually
amputated from merciless physical abuse from vicious adults. One boy,
pathetically, does not have a name. He answers to "Little Boy,"
which is the only name he has been addressed by for as long as he can
recall.
The
Family Circle Home is not perfect, by any stretch. At one point, Brewer
examines the shelter's bare rooms
and acknowledges the lack of furniture with an amiable "We're working
on it."
The shelter runs the constant risk of being overpopulated, so much that
mealtimes are conducting in shifts
because there is inadequate space to feed all of the children at once.
Even Brewer's private room is given to youngsters who camp out on his
floor for a night's sleep.
In
many ways, it is a shame that "Haitian Slave Children: Forgotten
Angels" runs less than an half-hour.
The magnitude of the tragedy here deserves a full accounting on many levels,
chiefly in hard questions
for the Haitian government and its American puppetmasters on why such
widespread child abuse is allowed to exist. The level of American aid
to Haiti has been substantial for many years, but results from the use
of these funds are
nowhere to be seen in the streets of Port Au Prince or the lives of the
children featured here.
Still,
"Haitian Slave Children: Forgotten Angels" performs an invaluable
service in highlighting Michael Brewer's extraordinary humanitarian work
in midst of a misery which most people in the civilized world could barely
imagine. This is a heartbreaking and important film which deserves to
be seen and discussed.
Independent News
"The filmmakers have created a documentary, "Haitian Slave
Children" on the cruel lives of those Haitian children."
