In an interview with the Boston Phoenix yesterday (via the Playlist), Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme revealed that Arcade Fire planned to film a music documentary in Haiti before the catastrophic January 12 earthquake devastated the country. Here’s the quote from Demme:
I was heading for Haiti last Friday with the band Arcade Fire. We were going to do a music driven, kind of music documentary, against a backdrop of carnival in Jacmel – the great, now devastated, south coast Haitian city. We had our final conference call the morning of the day the quake struck. We were gonna go down anyway until we realized we can’t really get there.”
Arcade Fire weren’t able to film in Haiti or help out in person, but they were able to lend a hand by donating licensing proceeds from the Super Bowl’s use of “Wake Up” this year.