About
Three friends, one road.
The Road to Fondwa began with a late-night idea in Indiana in 2005 and became, after five weeks of filming in Haiti and two years of editing across three cities, a 37-minute documentary. It premiered in San Francisco in March 2008.
Justin Brandon
Director · camera · editor
Justin shot and edited The Road to Fondwa and co-directed it with Dan Schnorr. A 2004 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he had made one earlier short documentary before traveling to Haiti in 2006 with five weeks of filming ahead of him.
Dan Schnorr
Director · co-editor
Dan co-directed and co-edited the film. A 2005 Notre Dame graduate, he spent a year living in Fondwa as a teacher at the University of Fondwa — teaching the first university-level immunology and genetics courses in Haitian Kreyòl — before later training in medicine. He ran the interviews on the ground and shaped the story in the edit.
Brian McElroy
Producer
Brian produced the film and added the English subtitles. A 2005 Notre Dame graduate, he volunteered for a year as Secretary of the University of Fondwa and co-founded the UNIF USA Foundation to support its work. He speaks Kreyòl, French, and Spanish, and first brought the idea of a documentary in Fondwa to the team.
For the full account of how the film came together, read The making of The Road to Fondwa.
How to capture a community in 40 minutes of film?
Five weeks of filming in Haiti followed by countless hours spent editing nearly 50 hours of footage have shown me and my fellow filmmakers that this is an impossible task.
Which shots most succinctly depict the breathtaking beauty of the Haitian countryside, or the crushing poverty ubiquitous to life in one of the world's poorest nations?
Which interviews most accurately portray the lifestyle and mindset of the people we encountered during production?
Though film offers a powerful medium through which to begin exploring rural Haiti, no collection of clips could ever do full justice to the intricate obstacles faced by the people living there, or to the exciting measures being undertaken in villages like Fondwa to overcome them.
Acknowledging this, we intend for The Road to Fondwa to serve not as a conclusion, but rather as an introduction.
Our aim is to present viewers with a glimpse of what life is really like for many of the people living only a few hundred miles outside of the United States' borders, and to provide background from which to build an understanding of the issues contributing to that reality.
What the viewer does with this information is up to him or her.
We hope that the film will inspire some people to learn more about Haiti and to become active in supporting the development of Fondwa and the building of the University of Fondwa, Haiti's first rural University.
Furthermore, though this documentary focuses on one village, the ideas presented have broader implications for anyone interested in development issues. I am sure those who have worked in any developing country will find points of overlap with the problems afflicting rural Haiti.
Ultimately, some of the strategies being implemented in Fondwa may have application in other parts of the developing world.
Lastly, the film is meant to serve as a tribute to the spirit and innovation of the people of Fondwa, with whom I spent one year of my life. Theirs is truly a story worth telling.
— Dan Schnorr, Directors' Statement, 2008
- info@fondwa.org
- Social
- @RoadToFondwa · Facebook
Hosted a community screening over the years, or appear in the film? We'd be glad to hear from you.