Title of Proposal:
Father Joe and The Bangkok Slaughterhouse
Category/Issue/Theme:
Human Rights

Synopsis:
Over half the world’s population, an estimated 3 billion people earn less than $2 per day. 25,000 people die every day of starvation – that’s one person every 3 ½ seconds. And about 1 billion don’t have access to clean drinking water… In the capital city of Thailand, Bangkok, or Krung Thep, as it used to be called which translates as ‘City of Angels’, there are 10 million inhabitants. Of these, two million are desperately poor and live in 2,000 slums throughout the city.

For over 35 years, Father Joe Maier, a Redemptorist Irish / American Catholic priest, has lived and worked in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum, a seething mass of poverty, drugs, warlords, prostitution, HIV/AIDS and ultimate desperation. Also known as the Slaughterhouse where pigs have been killed for 100 years or more, this is home to over 100,000 people. Arriving in Bangkok in 1972 where he established the Human Development Foundation in Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey slum, and together with the Mercy Centre which he also set up, Father Joe has put 70,000 children from the slums through school, has built or re-built 10,000 slum houses and has provided a refuge and a home for thousands of abused, prostituted and HIV/AIDS afflicted children.

We will trace Father Joe’s early days where he was shown little or no love at home and given a wretched time by an alcoholic and abusive father, to his first days in Bangkok in the 70’s where he was advised by Mother Teresa to dedicate his life to the suffering children of the Bangkok slums. We will walk with him first-hand through the slums of Klong Toey where he will show us his secret world and where very few outsiders have ever been allowed to venture. A world of warlords, drugs and prostitution. A world where a child’s life can be bought for a carton of whisky, a world where you can disappear without a trace. Father Joe will show us all this and how he is working within this underworld of desperation to create a better world for the children who are trapped within its bleak confines.

Father Joe’s story is far more complex and compelling than any fictional story could be. It is frightening because it is true. It is the real deal. The world as seen through his eyes does not make for a pretty dumbed down postcard; it is the reality of a hell on earth, but a hell which is touched by heaven and the little angels who live there.

It is a remarkable story that demands to be told.

Producers: James Lingwood, Mark Norfolk
Director/Writer: James Lingwood
Editor: Mark Norfolk
Estimated Length: 90 minutes
Present stage of production: In development.