The Wellfleet Public Library, in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, is hosting a short video on Matènwa and the Atis Fanm Matènwa collective on Sunday, July 25, 2010, at 5:00pm.  Filmed and edited by Michele Andolina and Ellen LeBow, the video features the activities of the collective and its co-founders on their most recent trip to Matènwa.

Wellfleet is home to RaRa, a small shop that showcases and sells Haitian artists’ work to support the community of Matènwa. Dedicated to sustainable living through art, the shop sells beautiful creations from the artisans’ collective Atis Fanm Matènwa, including spectacular hand-painted silk scarves, prints, jewelry, wood and metal artifacts, embroidered denim jackets, and sequined drapo, among other items. [Also see previous post RaRa and the Women Artists of Matènwa, Haiti.]

Matènwa is a small, rural Haitian community in the mountains of Lagonav, an island off Haiti. Atis Fanm Matènwa is an organized to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa community “to encourage self-respect and independence using new methods of self-sufficiency without rocking a fragile balance by using up limited natural resources like firewood and water.”

For more information on the collective, see http://www.artMatènwa.org/about.html