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"I had the wonderful opportunity to take a documentary film class with DA Pennebaker in my final semester of graduate school at Yale. During that spring of 2003, I spent most of my daylight hours in the DMCA drinking Diet Coke and poring over an editing suite, with a lot of help from Lee Faulkner. The experience inspired me to devote my time after graduation to film-making. I am forever thankful for their help and support!"
After graduating with masters degrees in Public Health and African Studies in 2003, Amelia received a Fulbright Fellowship to study the effects of mass media communications on AIDS outreach in Haiti. Part of the project involved making a documentary film about youth, sex, and vulnerability to AIDS. She formed a film company, Agence des Jeunes Producteurs (AJP) dedicated to producing AIDS-related educational videos for the Haitian population. Working in Haiti since 2003 has been hard - a coup d'etat and waves of kidnapping and violence have created many work stoppages. But despite this, in the last five years, AJP has created eight educational films on HIV-AIDS, sexual risk, rape, and domestic violence. They have also created important video training modules for doctors administering anti-retrovirals to AIDS patients. The films air on national television, and are widely used by grassroots organizations in rural outreach campaigns.
While simultaneously running the film company, Amelia was freelance reporting for radio, covering political and social upheaval from 2003-2006. She was a regular contributor to NPR, the BBC, CNN, and Voice of America.
Amelia currently works for the UN peacekeeping mission to Haiti, MINUSTAH. She is a video editor and producer for a weekly TV program in Creole called Jwet Pou Ou, or 'It's Your Turn '. The show profiles innovative development projects around Haiti. The mission is to show how Haitians are developing themselves, in an effort to promote grassroots development. You can see the program on MINUSTAH's website: www.minustah.org. During periods of upheavals and violence, Amelia makes TV documentaries and PSAs promoting non-violence and peaceful conflict resolution.
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