Nicaraguas children - yearning for culture
Doku | AUT/NICARAGUA 2004, 40 min
The upper austrian filmmaker Carola Mair takes the audience to an exiting journey to Nicaragua – in the poorest country of middleamerica. Through the fights for its independence. The wounds of the land are still not healed. 66 % of the people have no work, 34 % are analphabets – there is almost no social network.
The film also confrontate with the situation of the poor people – specially the situation of the children – who has to go to work instead going to School’s a way to survive but no way to get out of the circulation of the poorness and to get a human living in future. 80 % of the Nicaraguan kids are living in poorness.
Help is coming from international NGOs and through own social engagement. Partnerships with cities from Europe like Linz, Wels , Salzburg and the development cooperation with the Austrian government tries to reduce this bad situation in Nicaragua. One station is Nicaraguas oldest and most wonderful town Granada, where the American Donna Tabor, works in social projects with children from the streets. In Granada there is also “la casa de los 3 mundos” the house of the 3 worlds, one of the most important culture-institutions of Nicaragua – grounded from Dietmar Schönherr and Ernesto Cardenal.
The film tries to see the world through the eyes of the children and get so a better way of Understanding of the peoples worldwide. Also to get a better consciousness of a new culture of solidarity and to show the rich society of Europe the poorness in the south of the world.
Nicaragua and his people was formed by revolutions, disasters, corruptions over the years. Since over 20 years Linz helps with different helping programs in the Nicaraguan partnertown San Carlos. The journey is leading the audience not only in this dirty town at the end of the Nicaragualake, although to the island Solentiname – where the poet and cultureminister Ernesto Cardenal was living before he became minister of culture of Nicaragua.
Credits: Screenplay/Director: Carola Mair
Camera: Hermann Dunzendorfer, Max Auer
Editor: Erika Michalke
Sound: Johannes Kreissl