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Hey wheres your manhood with hitting me with GREY KARMA....HAHAHAHAHHAH!!! This ****in idiot doesnt even know the difference between red and grey.....
Anyway, you know Dominican children sniff glue and are sold by their parents????
SCPS filmmaker documents child abuse
Leisha Chen-Young
Issue date: 5/19/04 Section: Undefined Section
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Crowded by television cameras, journalists and tape recorders, with security herding the whole group toward the exit, SCPS student Mercedes Jimenez-Ramirez received some long-awaited attention for her documentary, "Palomos: Hijos de la Calle."
But this was no Hollywood premiere. There was no red carpet, no paparazzi thrusting cameras into the faces of Hollywood starlets, no necks frosted with diamonds.
The atmosphere at the fifth-annual Havana Film Festival in New York was fitting for the uncompromising, beautiful, independent films about Latin America that were screened in the last week of April at various venues, including NYU's King Juan Carlos Center, and the Quad Cinema on West 13th Street, where "Palomos" was shown.
"Small festivals like this provide a great support system, and a great venue for people like me to show people like you what is really happening in our countries," Jimenez-Ramirez said.
Translated as "Palomos: Children of the Street," the 28-minute documentary is a gritty, raw glance into the lives of a group of children living on the streets of the Boca Chica in the Dominican Republic. Facing hunger and abuse, they turn to sniffing glue to escape the misery of their situation.
The film premiered at the Havana Film Festival in Havana last December, then won the 2004 Lady Spring Short Film Festival in New York in February.
The Dominican Republic has struggled with the trafficking of children in ****ography, prostitution and pedophilia, Jimenez-Ramirez said. With increasing tourism in the country comes an increase in the exploitation of children for sex in a country well-known for having one of the healthiest sex trades in the world.
"The buck stops here, with this film," Jimenez-Ramirez said. "The message will get out."
Jimenez-Ramirez turned to film later in her life, though like Celia Cruz, who she said was a close friend, she would not reveal her age. After a career as a feature writer proved unfruitful, she turned to filmmaking, and she's studying film production at SCPS.
Jimenez-Ramirez, whose husband is Dominican, is originally from Havana, Cuba. But she said she felt a very strong connection to the Dominican Republic.
"To me, the Dominican Republic is just like Cuba," she said. "I couldn't go to Cuba, so the Dominican Republic became like my adopted little island."
While in the Dominican Republic, she was furious at - and motivated by - the fact that no one was talking about the problem.
"The images speak for themselves," she said of the footage of these teenage boys, most of whom had lived on the streets for months, some as young as 13, each high from sniffing glue. Surviving on garbage, begging or cleaning windscreens, and even prostitution, the misery is palpable. So, too, is the humanity and tenderness in their eyes.Comment
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