Phase one of our documentary following the presidential election in Nicaragua will be screened this week in Managua.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
7PM & 8PM
Cinema Galeria
Friday, October 20, 2006
4PM
Plaza Inter
Today I got home from dinner with my parents and grandparents and saw Arthur and Jeremiah for the first time in two weeks. Arthur asked me if I’d checked my messages. No, I’d been at dinner, I told him, and proceeded to do so. While I’d been at dinner, he’d forwarded me a text message from Ana, our producer in Nicaragua. This afternoon, Herty Lewites passed away.
What was supposed to be an extremely busy day today, with interviews packed together like sardines, turned out - in true Nica fashion - to be much slower paced.
We woke early for an eight o’ clock meeting, at his campaign headquarters, with former Vice President turned Presidential candidate Jose Rizo. The empty parking lot at the building was our first sign that there had been a misunderstanding. “Senior Rizo is not here,” explained an extremely friendly man once we’d been ushered inside. “He is campaigning in San Juan del Sur for the day!” At least an hour or two drive south, San Juan del Sur is a town known for its beautiful beaches, which I have read have some decent waves for surfing. Clearly there had been a mix-up somewhere along the line of communication, and we weren’t getting an interview today. We rescheduled, tentatively, and went on our way.
Flying over Managua during landing, I looked down on its roofs and busy streets and realized it had been exactly a month since I’d last seen this view. A lot can (and did) happen in a month, and yet it also feels like I never left. It’s a feeling I could easily get used to.
Nicaragua is hot, first because we’re not used to the heat anymore (thanks, Boston, you frosty, frigid iceburg of a city) and second because it actually is hotter this time. Nicaragua is allegedly in the middle of its rainy season, but we’ve not seen even a drop so far.
We’re home. Except, as after any unusual travel experiences, home now feels strange. It doesn’t help that for the last four days, Boston was about fifty degrees colder than Managua and wouldn’t stop raining. There are few things more depressing than several consecutive days of New England rain; everything just becomes impossibly gray.
But it’s sunny and something like seventy-eight degrees out today and we’re all busy, busy bees starting what I guess is called post-production work. On Wednesday, Arthur and I went to lunch with our friend, Jess Miller, who is going to be helping us edit. Jess, Arthur says, is the best editor at Emerson. She edited his previous documentary, Barang, which is an incredible piece. I’m really looking forward to working with her as well, beginning to shape a story out of all our footage. Plus Jess is just a lot of fun to be around.
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