arts & entertainment
Film
Barry Hampton, 42
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about Africa that are negative and depress-
ing and we didn’t want to fit into that mold.
In marketing, I think sometimes people
don’t know how to respond to it because it
doesn’t fit into that mold and they don’t
know what to do with it.
It’s also pretty nerdy. It’s pretty geeky.
And that’s because of the subject matter and
my co-director (Morgan Robinson) wanted
to make sure people understand all the dif-
ferent steps involved to eventually produce
solar energy. That’s a hard world for people
to step into sometimes. It’s not something
preachy, pro-environmental, anti-climate
change, because people are used to that.
tSn: But he’s not doing this to be “green”
or “pro-enivornment” is he? Unlike what
many people might associate with someone
installing solar panels in Portland. He’s
doing it because it’s practical?
CM: The current energy situation in Mali
is not really tenable. It’s very spotty in the
city. It’s expensive. It’s completely unavail-
able for people living outside of major
cities. I think he’s just thinking, helping
people who are ready to have energy to
have it. What’s the easiest, most financially
sound and non-environmentally degrading
way to provide that? And this just very sim-
ply makes sense.
tSn: Was it nice to make a film about
solar energy without having to get into the
political muck like you’d encounter in this
country?
CM: There’s not any resistance. The one
thing that amazes me, in a place like Mali,
you’re dealing with a completely ineffectu-
al power grid. They don’t have the political
resistance to something like solar.
They just get down to what makes sense
and what works. People there, the main way
to acquire fuel for cooking is to cut down
trees. This is in a country that is covered
mostly by the Sahara Desert. They realize
that this is not good for the place they live.
No one is telling them to cut down trees.
There is no tree cutting industry.
tSn: It’s just a matter of survival.
CM: Yeah. I guess that’s it, there is no tree
cutting industry. Well I guess there is, peo-
ple do sell blocks of wood …
tSn: What kind of challenges did you
face filming?
CM: One challenge was knowing when to
turn off the camera. We shot about 140
hours of film in three months. The amount
is average for a documentary, but in 3
months, it’s a lot. The reason is, everyone
we were filming, there was a lot going on, a
lot of characters, we didn’t necessarily have
the story in mind from the beginning. We
were filming everyone and everything. That
was challenging and exhausting. There
were two cameras, a three person crew. We
were shooting all day nonstop. Definitely
language was a challenge. The film is in
English, French and Bambara (Mali’s native
language) with Italian and Spanish going on
for various reasons. … Sometimes when we
were filming and not knowing what we
were filming…
Frankly, it was really, really, really hot,
especially in the village. We were boiling
our own water and letting it cool.
A celebration of the life of local musician Barry Hampton will be held at 9
p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 9 at Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave. Hampton, a
musician and singer for multiple local bands, died on Feb. 4, 2011. Details
will be published as they are made available.
Organizers of the celebration are asking singers, poets, musicians, family
and friends who knew Hampton to come and celebrate his life with food
and song. Attendees will be encouraged to share stories, photos, perform
and bring food to share. His daughters will be in town as well.
Barry leroy Hampton was born on Sept. 16, 1968. He was a member of
Barry Hampton and the Triple Grip, The Clampdown, an original member
of the Black key and was curriculum creator at REAl Prep Charter
Academy.
N ew
Fe at u r e
Online
Now you can post
your announce-
ments
directly, using The
Skanner.com
‘YOUR BEAT, Eyes
on the Street’.
february 9, 2011 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 7