By Brian Gregg
Special to NKyTribune
For the past decade, Northern Kentucky University Professor Sara Drabik and her film students in the Electronic Media and Broadcasting program have trekked to Guatemala for a life-changing experience – one that a local filmmaker is now featuring in an upcoming documentary that will air in prime time.
Each year, the group spends an immersive week overseas during spring break, on a coffee plantation located on the south slope of a Guatemalan volcano. Students earn three credits and shoot short documentaries while there.
“Several of my students have not been to another country before,” Drabik said. “Some of them have never been on a plane before. You get them in this totally different culture and environment and it’s such an eye opener.
“They see the world different, they see their neighbors different, they see themselves different, they gain confidence they never knew they had. They learn a lot of empathy too because they get to be the person in the room that doesn’t look like everybody else, that doesn’t speak the same language, and they know what that feels like.”
Drabik made those comments to filmmaker Laure Quinlivan, who has produced a documentary, “Connecting Cultures: Cincinnati to Guatemala,” that features the many connections between the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky area and the Central America country.
At a time when immigration is very much a hot topic in the United States, the documentary shows how Cincinnatians have helped children in Guatemala over the past 30 years, and how, in turn, Guatemalan immigrants are influencing businesses, schools, churches and neighborhoods in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region.
The documentary airs on WCPO 9, on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 8 p.m. A few days later, Women in Film Cincinnati is hosting an in-person screening of the film at the Mariemont Theater, on Monday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m. Drabik, who is a board member of the nonprofit Women in Film Cincinnati, will moderate the audience Q&A with the filmmaking team following the screening. Students featured in the documentary, and some who worked on it with Quinlivan, are expected to attend.
Also featured in the film is the Northern Kentucky organization Esperanza NKY, a Covington-based nonprofit that connects Guatemalan immigrants to services.
Executive Director Violeta Colman says there are more than1 8,000 Hispanic immigrants living in Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties.
“My film introduces Guatemalan immigrants who live and work in Cincinnati, helping our region thrive,” Quinlivan said. “I want to give a fresh take on what immigration means to the Cincinnati region.”
Quinlivan began shooting her documentary on a February trip to Guatemala with Cincinnati Rotary Club and the nonprofit Cooperative for Education. When she learned NKU students were going to Guatemala in March, she hired Emma Tallent, a recent NKU graduate who went on the Guatemala study abroad trip when she was a student, to shoot video of current students studying and working in Guatemala.
Drabik began taking her students to study abroad in Guatemala in 2016.
“It’s gotten a lot more popular because it’s known at NKU as the coolest study abroad you can do,” Drabik said.
NKU and Drabik were connected to the opportunity to study abroad in Guatemala through Margaret Swallow, a former Procter & Gamble leader who co-founded the nonprofit International Women’s Coffee Alliance. “I’m a matchmaker,” says Swallow in the film.
Relationships like these that have created longstanding education and coffee connections between Cincinnati and Guatemala are featured in the documentary film.
In addition to the Northern Kentucky connections, the documentary features:
• West sider Joe Berninger, who co-founded Cooperative for Education to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala by teaching kids to read and graduate high school, with the help of sponsors in Cincinnati and around the world.
• Cincinnati families who sponsor Guatemalan children to ensure they graduate high school, since most Guatemalan students drop out after 6th grade due to finances.
• Olga Hazard, a Guatemalan coffee grower who imports directly to the owners of Cincinnati’s Coffee Emporium, which is now sold at Kroger, Jungle Jim’s and online.
• The priest at Our Lady of the Rosary who leads one of 40 Spanish-language masses at Archdiocese of Cincinnati churches, along with Community Pastor Victor Martinez, who leads Hispanic outreach for Crossroads Church.
• Walter Vasquez, a Guatemalan pastor with Bloc Ministries and OLA Immigration Welcome Center, who introduces us to Guatemalan entrepreneurs in Price Hill.
“I hope people watch the documentary on WCPO at 8 p.m. on November 12,and join us November 16 for the in-person screening at the Mariemont,” says Quinlivan. “The real power of documentary film is discussing it afterward with people who’ve just watched it together.”