The
United Nations has long acted like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. In the case of Haiti, it is pestilence. Allegedly thanks to the UN peacekeeping force,
a deadly wave of cholera has swept the dysfunctional country. Viewers witness the epidemic from the vantage
point of a young ball player in David Darg & Bryn Mooser’s short
documentary, Baseball in the Time of
Cholera (trailer
here), which
screens as part of the Help Wanted programming
block during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Joseph
Alvyns and his friends should simply be spending an innocent summer on the
baseball diamond. They play as often as
they can, but it is impossible to ignore the post-hurricane chaos around
them. Yet, when Alvyns sees the
devastation of the 3/11 hurricane and tsunami in Japan, he is compelled to
reach out in a spirit of solidarity. His
efforts attract international attention, even earning him a VIP trip to
Toronto, courtesy of the Blue Jays. Unfortunately,
when he returns, cholera strikes at the heart of his family.
Technically,
Darg and Mooser do not conclusively establish the Nepalese “peace-keepers” are
the source of the cholera outbreak.
Still, the sight of raw sewage spilling from their latrine into Haiti’s
central river coupled with the Heisman the Nepalese commander gives their
camera man constitutes a pretty convincing circumstantial case. The film also asks legitimate question: why
are there peace-keepers stationed in a country that has not been at war for
centuries? However, they largely let the
successive authoritarian and socialist governments off the hook for bringing
the Haitian state to the brink of complete failure.
Time boasts some
unusually big names behind the camera, including executive producers Olivia Wilde
and Tesla Motors entrepreneur Elon Musk, one of three POV figures in Chris
Paine’s Revenge of the Electric Car, which
screened at last year’s Tribeca. To its
credit, the film community has rallied to Haiti’s aide, yet there has not been
a similar celebrity rush on behalf of Japanese recovery efforts. Therefore, it is worth taking the time to
note those wishing to follow Alvyns’ example can also donate to the Japan Society’s
relief fund (details here).