Puerto Morazán, Nicaragua – twinned with Bristol

Here’s a film I made about this place, in 2 parts. It’s a very basic intro, aimed at kids. For the film, I tried not to make a “here look at these poor peasants” film, which can easily reinforce our ideas that the rest of the world are some kind of second-class people. It’s meant to avoid being a liberal, raised, perspective where the viewer is elevated above the gritty reality of life in “the last corner of Nicaragua” (check the background voice at 2:40 of part 2 – a remarkably lucid comment from an otherwise drunk and annoying guy). It’s meant to allow the viewer to empathise with Puerto Morazanains, whilst it does draw out some more subtle differences – that kids have to retake their year if they fail their exams, for example.

My issue was that having made it with this framework in mind, I began to worry that this could be seen as washing out the reality of poverty and failing to take the opportunity to analyse the structural causes of this poverty. Bearing in mind the intended audience – Bristol school kids – the coda text was an attempt to reconcile this and introduce the viewer to the craziness of the Contra scandal: the CIA illegally and secretly continued to fund the Contras – short for contra-revolucionarios – through funds from the sale of arms to Iran in the 1980s. This story is a fascinating case-study for understanding the history of US foreign policy in Central America in the latter half of the twentieth century. The pattern is clear that the US elites, through the CIA and quasi-private corporations, deliberately obstructed and sabotaged any economic or social development autonomous to that authorised and decreed by the US establishment through the IMF and the World Bank, characterised as neo-liberal.

I’m really pleased with the finished product. The footage was shot on my stills camera, which takes 10 frames per second video, in 30 second clips! It’s highly basic, some camera phones might be better these days. But I wanted to give it a go to show what can be done on basic equipment with a clear idea of what you want to show – and some nice software to edit it with. And if you have a sick fast internet connection, click the HQ button below the video to see the High Quality version… hope you like it.

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