Heart-wrenching Hopscotch

>> Marquise Lepage documents global female poverty

by MATTHEW HAYS

Marquise Lepage found the inspiration for her latest film in a story by Montreal journalist Raymonde Provencher. Having written extensively on issues of international poverty, Provencher wrote one article arguing that poverty always ended up affecting girls more harshly than boys.

Upon reading this, Lepage, whose last film was the NFB production The Lost Garden, decided she had her next doc's subject. Employing a network of funding agencies, she set out to travel to as many different countries as she could, to profile a series of different girls who have virtually nothing in common other than their gender, age and poverty.

Many of Lepage's interviews are heart-wrenching; one Thai girl, forced to work as a prostitute, discusses her ongoing fear of getting AIDS; a girl in Burkina-Faso talks of the pain of female circumcision; and another in Peru speaks of longing to go to school (she can't because of a demanding job).

"I really wanted to show life from their point of view," says Lepage. "Coming from a rich country, I wasn't sure I would be able to do it. But even though many of their lives are nightmarish, it wasn't very dramatic for them--just normal."

Titled Hopscotch and Little Girls, the film's release date is no coincidence: 1999 marks the tenth anniversary of the United Nation's Children's Rights Convention. "At times, this has been very tough," reports Lepage of the filmmaking process. "I feel like I've left a little bit of my heart everywhere. I would have loved to have brought all the children back home with me."