[rating: 4.5/5]
Producer and director of “Dreams are not Forgotten,” Nigel Barker, broke away from his high fashion photography sets to a setting that has changed drastically since a devastating earthquake in 2010.
“Dreams are not Forgotten,” is a documentary film about the younger generations in Bel Air, Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Because of its poignancy and reality of the earthquake’s aftermath, Barker’s film is a one to be remembered.
Not once in the film did I see people crying as they went along with their daily lives; even after waking up from having one blanket and an old pillow, the only things between them and the ground. Or when the water they used to clean themselves, their clothes, and their dishes, held a light fog of mud. No tears were seen when the people in the marketplace did not have stands and would sell already rotting lettuce, and wrinkling oranges.
But the focus was not on the people of Bel Air’s trash and rubble filled streets, it was about the younger generation and their vision for something better. Their faces showed determination, not tears.
“Dreams are not Forgotten” shows how much the young adults and children want their futures to be something better than what they have been handed. And not only is their desire evident, but so is their willingness to work hard for that future.
Barker followed the daily lives of a number of young Haitians who not only wanted better lives for themselves, but for others as well.
Whether it was a native returning from the US to teach, or a 13-year-old schoolgirl who aspired to be a nurse, or a young man who yearned for an education and to work for the Edeyo Foundation, they all desired to be of service to their people.
There have been plenty of photographic and film documentation of regions that have been hit by natural disasters, revealing the impact it makes on the lives of native populations. But Barker effectively created a new perspective on the lives of these people. Not one of sympathy, but of encouragement.
Barker opens the film with the young 13-year-old girl playing in the water under the sun; laughing, splashing, and discovering the beauty of some seashells. And as the film drew to an end, the same girl dipped her hands in water with dirt clouds as she was washing dishes and placing them in buckets. Flashbacks to the time she spent playing with her palms in the water, then back to shots of her crouching to scrub.
She knows what she is working toward. Despite the odds, her “Dreams are not Forgotten.”
