Film to examine group's removal work
By KEVIN HOWE
Herald Staff Writer
The Herald (Monterey, California, USA)
Two documentary filmmakers will travel to Cambodia with 12 Freedom Fields USA board members in January to film the progress being made in that country as it tries to recover from decades of civil war.
Carmel-based Freedom Fields USA has been working with demining specialists from the international HALO Trust for more than four years to remove land mines from Cambodia. The organization has raised close to $500,000 for the work, according to Mia Hamwey of Carmel, one of the founders.
Its efforts have been concentrated in the northwestern region of Cambodia, where Freedom Fields USA and HALO Trust have cleared more than 3,000 land mines, antitank mines and other unexploded ordnance from more than 100 acres, including areas around schools, she said.
During their visit, Hamwey said, Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will meet with the group as part of a tour she will be taking as a board member of the HALO Trust, a charity based in the United Kingdom that organizes land-mine removal work throughout the world that Freedom Fields supports.
The McCains lent their support to the program at a gala for Freedom Fields in July at Clint Eastwood's Tehama Golf Club.
Freedom Fields has taken on clearing the K-5 Mine Belt, the most heavily mined area in Cambodia and one that has claimed a victim from one of every 250 area inhabitants, Hamwey said.
Approximately 2 million land mines -- 85 percent of those planted in Cambodia -- were sown in the K-5 belt, so named because it passes through the five provinces of Kiemrieng District. At the current rate of funding they could be removed in about five years, she said.
The mines were planted to hem in Khmer Rouge soldiers as the Vietnamese army hunted them down to the Thai border.
Removal costs about $100 per mine.
The groups' mine clearance work, Hamwey said, has benefited hundreds of families by freeing up land for new homes, water wells and fields to cultivate for crops.
Orlando, Fla., filmmakers Kevin Ball and John Evanko decided to make Freedom Fields and the cause of removing land mines the subject of their next documentary after learning about it on the Internet.
The two have been involved in the film industry for nearly 20 years as stuntmen, studio hands and lately, documentary filmmakers.
"I was looking online for other groups to get involved with myself as volunteer work," Ball said, and found Freedom Fields on a site called idealist.com, a volunteer match organization.
"I'm trying to combine my two loves: the film industry and helping others," he said.
Their Karma180 Productions studio will begin filming in Carmel in January, continue filming in Cambodia, and hope to have the film completed and ready for distribution next year.
For more information on the project, visit http://web.mac.com/karma180. For more information on Freedom Fields, visit www.freedomfieldsusa.org.
By KEVIN HOWE
Herald Staff Writer
The Herald (Monterey, California, USA)
Two documentary filmmakers will travel to Cambodia with 12 Freedom Fields USA board members in January to film the progress being made in that country as it tries to recover from decades of civil war.
Carmel-based Freedom Fields USA has been working with demining specialists from the international HALO Trust for more than four years to remove land mines from Cambodia. The organization has raised close to $500,000 for the work, according to Mia Hamwey of Carmel, one of the founders.
Its efforts have been concentrated in the northwestern region of Cambodia, where Freedom Fields USA and HALO Trust have cleared more than 3,000 land mines, antitank mines and other unexploded ordnance from more than 100 acres, including areas around schools, she said.
During their visit, Hamwey said, Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will meet with the group as part of a tour she will be taking as a board member of the HALO Trust, a charity based in the United Kingdom that organizes land-mine removal work throughout the world that Freedom Fields supports.
The McCains lent their support to the program at a gala for Freedom Fields in July at Clint Eastwood's Tehama Golf Club.
Freedom Fields has taken on clearing the K-5 Mine Belt, the most heavily mined area in Cambodia and one that has claimed a victim from one of every 250 area inhabitants, Hamwey said.
Approximately 2 million land mines -- 85 percent of those planted in Cambodia -- were sown in the K-5 belt, so named because it passes through the five provinces of Kiemrieng District. At the current rate of funding they could be removed in about five years, she said.
The mines were planted to hem in Khmer Rouge soldiers as the Vietnamese army hunted them down to the Thai border.
Removal costs about $100 per mine.
The groups' mine clearance work, Hamwey said, has benefited hundreds of families by freeing up land for new homes, water wells and fields to cultivate for crops.
Orlando, Fla., filmmakers Kevin Ball and John Evanko decided to make Freedom Fields and the cause of removing land mines the subject of their next documentary after learning about it on the Internet.
The two have been involved in the film industry for nearly 20 years as stuntmen, studio hands and lately, documentary filmmakers.
"I was looking online for other groups to get involved with myself as volunteer work," Ball said, and found Freedom Fields on a site called idealist.com, a volunteer match organization.
"I'm trying to combine my two loves: the film industry and helping others," he said.
Their Karma180 Productions studio will begin filming in Carmel in January, continue filming in Cambodia, and hope to have the film completed and ready for distribution next year.
For more information on the project, visit http://web.mac.com/karma180. For more information on Freedom Fields, visit www.freedomfieldsusa.org.
1 comment:
I love people of idea and hope. I applaud and those involve for helping to clear landmines.
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