ESPWA LEVE (HOPE RISES)
A DOCUMENTARY BY JUSTIN THOMAS
"Everybody all over the world will see that we did...what many people were trying to do, but could not do."
This documentary film will illustrate the journey of a group of young Haitians in the city of Port Au Prince and a host of volunteer American paramedics struggling to create the first EMS unit in the history of Haiti. Amid the chaotic fallout from the devastation of 2010’s crippling earthquake, a deadly cholera epidemic, and the unrest surrounding the presidential elections, a group of civilian volunteers led by EMTs & Paramedics from New York City began training a motley group of Haitian women and men on how to help, heal and rescue their own people.
The film will follow characters enrolled in two organizations; Gwoup Ayisien Pou Ijans (Haitian Emergency Group) and its American affiliate partner, The Banshee Association. Banshee is a human rights oriented EMS club based in NYC that represents roughly 100 members of the NYC Emergency medical service. GAI is a mutual aid association based in Port Au Prince representing 28 EMTs and 65 first-responders; to date, it is Haiti’s only volunteer EMS organization. When several members of Banshee deployed in the days immediately following the 2010 quake a handful of young EMS workers have organized an alliance between Brooklyn and Port Au Prince to build the country’s first modern EMS system. This is a film about solidarity and the dream of raising a proud resilient people from the rubble, and moving them into a renewed sense of autonomy and sustainability that can be a beacon for the international struggle for human rights.