Documentary stories, 2014
Typhoon Haiyan: four children
It started asChildren after a disaster.
I foundAt 14, Vergel had just got a job on a fishing boat. Then the typhoon took the boats.
Director, camera and field producer; photography
- Commissioned by Save the Children
- Published by The Guardian, 2014
Brief
Save the Children needed someone to travel straight after Typhoon Haiyan and gather video and photography for its website and placement in international media.
Fieldwork and deliverables
I travelled to the Philippines, gathered video and photographs, and made films following children and families in the immediate aftermath of the typhoon.
Publication
I made films from the material for The Guardian, bringing these individual stories to an international readership.
Vergel is 14 but looks younger. He left school to feed his younger siblings because his father was ill, and had just got work on a fishing boat. The typhoon wrecked the boats, took the nets and poisoned the fish with oil. Now he competes for work with every fisherman who lost his livelihood.
Anna Mae, 11, shows me her flattened village, the tarpaulin her family received from Save the Children, and her schoolbooks, still soggy from the storm. She can’t wait to go back to class.
Marilyn, 11, was born unable to walk. By candlelight she remembers being frightened, most of all for her younger siblings, when her parents told her the storm was coming. Now she worries that her father can’t replace his fishing boat, and then that he won’t be able to bring her afternoon snacks like he used to.
Jhusmine, 19, fled the typhoon heavily pregnant and gave birth a few hours before I filmed her. Her husband Adonis shows me his boat, washed inland and intact, but the nets are gone. Their home is gone too. How will they bring up their baby?
Plan your next film.
What is the story
inside your subject?
Bring the issue or the programme. I’ll find the way in.