The Guardian Angel of Guatemala
Short Documentary: VICE – Giles Clarke
By day, Dr. Jorge Chiu is a cardiothoracic surgeon. By night, he volunteers as a paramedic to help the violence-ridden streets of Guatemala City. There’s no telling what he’ll be dealing with on any given night. One moment Dr. Chiu will be dealing with a house fire—the next he’ll be treating gunshot wounds.
Guatemala City’s metro area is the largest in Central America (population estimates vary widely, but there are somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million people here), and the nation is one of the most violent on Earth. According to the US State Department, in 2012 there were about 100 murders a week in the country of 15 million, and as many as 60 percent of Guatemalans own a gun. Put a heavily armed populace together with a region where gang warfare and drug trafficking are rampant, add a corrupt, incompetent police force and the problems that come along with widespread poverty, extreme street violence and deaths are common.
Chiu is a very busy man. Here are some moments of the violence and chaos he faces on a daily basis.
In this episode of Profiles by VICE, photographer Giles Clarke traveled to Guatemala City to learn the gritty truth about Dr. Chiu’s alter ego as a Guatemalan guardian angel.
- Duration: 20 min
Date
- 29 Feb 2024
- Expired!
Time
- 15:25 - 15:45
Labels
- Film Screening,
- Talk
Organizer
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Xposure International Photography Festival
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Phone
+971 6 512 3411 -
Email
info@xposure.net -
Website
https://xposure.net
Speaker
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Giles ClarkeGiles Clarke is a photojournalist focusing on capturing the human face of current and post-conflict issues throughout the world. Since 2017, Clarke has been working closely with UN/OCHA on awareness campaigns in war-torn Yemen and the Sahel region of central Africa.
Clarke began his film and photography career in West Berlin as a 16mm camera assistant at the height of the Cold War during the mid-1980s before switching to a successful professional black-and-white photographic printer career in London and New York. In 1997, Clarke worked in the Richard Avedon darkroom in New York on some now-iconic fashion campaigns.
