Madrid Film Festival

It was an interesting trip to Madrid for me this month. I lived in Spain as a teenager, in a small town in Granada, and have returned many times. Some of my best memories from that period of my life are from Spain, so that country and its landscape hold great meaning for me. On this trip, I had come to Madrid to participate in the Madrid Documentary Festival. Four years earlier my film, LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR won the festival’s Audience Award. This time I returned with THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION, a short documentary based on a Redemption Road, a novel by Liberian writer Elma Shaw. Elma wrote about Bendu, a young woman who was forced to join the rebel army as a young girl, during her Liberia’s nearly two decade long civil war. The novel takes place in the years following the war, when Bendu finds herself overwhelmed with guilt and shame for her actions while under threat of death.

I met Elma Shaw a little over a year ago, when I was in Liberia making a film for Amnesty International about women after war. Amnesty International wanted to highlight the lack of reintegration support for women who had been child soldiers during the war. Elma had returned to work with an NGO after living in the Diaspora (in Washington DC). The Amnesty International Producer, Tania Bernath had met Elma at the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings. Tania and I were both immediately drawn to Elma’s spirit and intelligence. When I found out that she was about to finish her book, it struck me as an intriguing device to include readings from her book as narration for a film.

I wanted to make a film that had a different spirit than maybe the more typical documentary about war. Certainly it would include the fear, violence and tragedy that the war created, but it would also be gentle and hopeful, even loving, for there is something about the women we met and worked with – Elma, Florence Ballah, Jackie Redd and Mickey Kesseley – that struck me as both powerful and empathetic. Indeed, I accessed the footage from the one shoot to make both the Amnesty piece and THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION. The films are different though, Redemption Road is a bit more poetic and WOMEN OF LIBERIA: FIGHTING FOR PEACE for Amnesty International is a more utilitarian portrait.

I actually shot this film. Mostly a decision that was required under the circumstances (I was the only one who had any experience shooting) and in fact I loved it. It is very healing and satisfying to be the shooter and the director. I wonder now, could I shoot other films? Not feeling confident about my hand held capacity, the entire movie is shot from a tripod. At least no shaky shots… Clearly there are some films that require hand held, but this one worked very well with a more controlled aesthetic.

My recommendation to young documentary filmmakers is to learn all the skills for filmmaking (camera, sound, editing) so that they can, if there is no other choice, do it themselves as well as up the chances of being hired for other filmmakers work…If I could it over again, I’d have learned them all.