Full Energy

Nicolas Houghton
Sep 1, 2018 · 6 min read
Our crew unloading gear near the Guatemalan border.

“We need to go back before it gets dark”. Our guide and local coordinator, Gloria Chonchim, had just spent the last 15 minutes speaking with the three machine gun carrying policeman that had accompanied us up to the tiny village 20 minutes south of the Guatemalan border. “If we stay here after dark, it is not safe” she reiterated, highlighting the growing danger as the light dimmed on the 4th day of shooting for our documentary Mothers Of; Exploring the twists and turns of strict abortion laws in El Salvador, told through Teodora Carmen Vasquez’s personal story of struggle with these laws. As we trekked back down from the hills where Teodora, her relatives, and her relatives’ relatives all lived, we started to think back about how we ended up in the worlds most violent country, making a film about one of the worlds most taboo subjects.

We flew from Toronto direct to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador and the largest city in the country, three days after being hired to work on the project. Amid a flurry of printed research articles, dossiers of Amnesty International documents, and last minute equipment carnets, we landed into sweaty heat of Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport. As we left the cool blasts of air-condition at baggage claim into the crowd of people clamouring at the pick up section of the airport, we immediately felt the weight of responsibility this project carried.

We had arrived.

Celebratory beers in the airport van.

Long, swooping bird calls floated out of the dark as a van driven by our local fixers pulled behind the mass of people forming at the mouth of the airport. Out of the van stepped our hosts for the next week, Jhonaton Delgado and Gloria Chonchim, a husband — wife production team working all over Central America. Jhonaton had a larger than life personality, spouting “FULL ENERGY!” as often and as loud as possible, as well as offering everyone a Pepsi at every turn; This was matched perfectly by his wife Gloria’s eye rolls and sarcastic “Okay Jhon” ’s. They were collectively our guides, coordinators, hosts, translators and troubleshooters for the entire shoot, and proved to be essential for the project.

After a late night of plastering our downtown Airbnb with reference images from Malik movies and last minute logistical timelines, as well as an ongoing discussion on whether or not we should eat ice in restaurants (it’s completely fine, no matter what Christian says), we start our first day of shooting.

The city of San Salvador is crowded, with bars, stores, restaurants all crammed together under the metal sheet roofs that cover most of the buildings in the city. People selling goods criss-cross the streets, as anyone who has spent any time in Central and South America will know well. We spent the next two days in the centre of these neighbourhoods, using the energy of the city as the cornerstone that the rest of the story is built off of; Collecting B-Roll of open air second story billiard halls, grand palatial cathedrals, and pungent fish markets at the close by La Libertad beach. It was a much needed ease into the pool of intense subject matter we’d come to live in during the next week.

Shoot day three was focused on Teodora herself, with us setting up camp in the small courtyard of a women’s rights NGO in San Salvador. We showed up in two large passenger vans, squeezing into the tight parking spots at the side of the building. Piling all our gear into the side office beside the courtyard, we then waited for her to arrive. We later learned that Teodora’s total transit time to come into the city is four hours minimum, because of the lack of formal bus routes, and the infrastructure to maintain them.

Teodora Vasquez.

The interview itself took around 2 hours, with Teodora slowly unraveling the events that lead up to her being a voice for this cause, and the subject of our doc. We won’t go to in detail in this account, but if you’d like to read more about the inequality and state of women’s rights in El Salvador, Amnesty International’s dossier breaks down the subject matter better than we ever could; You can find it here: https://www.amnesty.ca/sites/amnesty/files/embargoed_on_the_brink_of_death_el_salvador.pdf. It was heartbreaking to hear the emotion shift in her voice when she moved from how excited she was for her son and unborn daughter to meet, into her being torn away from him all together based on false evidence of her abortion. Marcelo, our translator, we felt especially for as he had to relive each event twice; both in English and Spanish.

The next day or two was filled with complications. Money not transferring, certain shots not being available, us doing our best to express the emotional ties that we did, in fact, have towards this subject matter; We were certainly not just another news crew vying for ratings off of the extreme subject matter tied to Teodora’ story. The culmination of those days offered two things:

1. We would have to shoot a women’s emergency hospital and Teodoras’ home (two of the most important sequences of the entire film) on the same day

2. Because of the Prison Olympics (don’t ask), we would not be able to enter the women’s prison Teodora had been held in, and would have to fly back at a later date to capture it

Roll with it.

As we drove the 3 hours up towards the Guatemalan border, midday on our 4th full day of shooting, we all shared the same sense of intrigue at what would we arrive too. As said above, Teodoras’ village was secluded, with us having to hike our gear 20 minutes up hills and past the coffee trees that surround the small family compound. Stray dogs (or Chuchos as the kids called them) swirl around our legs as we walked; Asking if they had names only produced quizzical looks in response. Her family home was a small, mud-packed building with a well and a cooking fire out front, and completely filled with people praying. Short monotone songs floated out of the main room, where people raised hands and bowed heads in prayer.

We scrambled to capture everything in it’s most natural state in the limited time we have left in the day. Dogs barking in chorus at kids playing soccer in the dirt. Mother and son kissing and hugging under laundry lines playing in the breeze. Family members ducking in and out of the cool dirt walls of the house, moving from prayer to causal chats. It’s family in it’s purest form. It’s beautiful.

Filming at Teodoras Village.

“Tenemos que irnos ahora”. It was now the policeman’s turn to usher us out of the village, as the stress to leave moved up the ladder of authority. We begrudgingly started the trek back down towards our awaiting passenger vans, our shoulders heavy with the weight of responsibility of accurately depicting their home.

Did we capture enough? Did we do Teodora and her family justice? Documenting this kind of subject matter is never easy, but it was especially important to us as we regard ourselves as emotional filmmakers; Playing the raw emotions of the story, not the factual subject matter that makes the news. Teodora Vasquez struggles are awful, but she is just one of the many, many people that go through this kind of turmoil each year in El Salvador.

This problem does not go away with the freedom of one person; Our involvement with it does not end at one documentary.

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