Other shots show Haitians clawing their way through the rubble in an attempt to find belongings and with so much of the city in ruins; there is no way to discourage people from rummaging.

This was the scene Algonquin documentary students drove into, as they began a two week filming of the wreckage and the rebuilding. 

“There is no red tape anywhere, no bulldozers, no wrecking balls,” said Peter Biesterfeld, Documentary program coordinator.
Algonquin documentary students arrived in the city of Port-au-Prince, completely grey from dust and debris.
Documentarians, Christian Roblin and Suma Suresh along with their program coordinator took flight Feb. 14 on a two week trip to Haiti.

The students captured footage of the civil engineering students helping and teaching local Haitians to build temporary shelters designed by the local Ottawa firm Housall Systems Corporation, who approached the college’s applied research and innovation office to help.

Biesterfeld recalled workers being surrounded by Haitian locals, all looking for work, as the country is sitting at a 75 percent unemployment rate which is responsible for the tension between the people who have jobs and those who don’t.

“The trip was very humbling and no one can imagine waking up and finding out everything you knew has been erased,” Suresh said as she spoke of the lives of the individuals who have come crashing down. Local residents and workers hesitated to speak on camera, but as Biesterfeld explained, the documentarians had to gain trust and build relationships in order to distinguish themselves from journalists who were there just to catch a quick glimpse into the devastation, but rather delve deep into the lives of the victims.

There are many broadcasters and journalists looking for a quick bite of the situation and may show the same compassion as the documentarians.

“A photographer tapped me on the shoulder as I was filming,” Suresh said. “He asked me if had seen Sean Penn, because he had made several trips to Haiti.”

The travel itinerary included a flight from Ottawa to Fort Lauderdale, another to Santo Domingo located in the Dominican Republic then a six hour shuttle from the tropical palm tree paradise to the grey trees, building rubble and demolished roads of Port-au-Prince.

Miles Kennedy, founder of Housall was eager to get the Algonquin students on board for this trip.
“I knew Haiti would be an incredible learning opportunity for students, which is why I was so aggressive at getting them involved,” Kennedy said.

The refugee camp, where the Housall structures were built, is a former country club that tents around 50,000 Haitians most of whom are children. The new buildings will be used for shelter, makeshift medical centers and schools in an attempt to bring some stability to the area.

The images caught on film will be used not only for a one-hour-long documentary, but also for public service announcements for Save the Children.

John Barteaux, civil engineer professor, along with his students Shane Barteaux and Matt Phillip, built the long-term shelters, patented by the Ottawa based-firm. 

A prototype was built in Haiti prior to the earthquake and remains intact now, proving its resistance to even the harshest conditions.

“Nothing you can do to prepare is good enough, it was traumatizing,” Kennedy said.

Save the Children is one of the largest NGOs in the world and ensured the safety of the Algonquin students and faculty throughout the trip. With such a large organization helping to rebuild a nation, documentarians found it somewhat cumbersome to work their way through the “departmental bureaucracy”, as Biesterfeld put it. 

The NGO has been enormously effective in Haiti, and because of the magnitude of the damage, the administration is understandably a little slow. Haiti is a unique situation that cannot be compared to any other disaster and is a learning experience for the NGOs as well.

Documentarians will have to sift through and relive the 32 hours of footage, a task that will prove emotionally demanding after building deep relationships with the Haitians in such a short trip.

Kennedy plans a return trip to Port-au-Prince in the coming weeks to continue work and hopes to bring along the Suresh and Roblin to finish the documentary.

Professor Manard, who teaches the business side of the documentary program, is currently undertaking that task of selling the documentary to local television stations.