In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing

Photo Credit: Greg Kessler

Photo Credit: Abgail Disney

Bios: Gini Reticker is one of the world’s leading documentary filmmakers whose primary focus is on individuals, particularly women, engaged in struggles for social justice and human rights. Her filmmaking has taken her to conflict zones around the globe, including Liberia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Reticker is the executive producer of PBS’s series Women, War & Peace. Her earlier work includes the 2004 Academy-Award-nominated short Asylum. She was also the producer/co-director of Heart of the Matter, Ladies First, and The Class of 2006, amongst several others. (Credit: Pray the Devil Back to Hell Official Website)

Abigail E. Disney is a filmmaker, philanthropist, and scholar. She has produced a number of documentaries focused on social themes, including the award-winning 2008 film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which discovered and shared with the world the little-known story of how a small band of women dared to break barriers of gender and politics in Liberia and end a century of entrenched civil war. The film inspired her to form Peace is Loud (peaceisloud.org), an organization that supports female voices and international peace building through nonviolent means. Her film, Women, War & Peace recently aired on PBS.

Description: Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country.

Thousands of women—ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and daughters, both Christian and Muslim—came together to pray for peace and then staged a silent protest outside the Presidential Palace. Armed only with white T-shirts and the courage of their convictions, they demanded a resolution to the country’s civil war. Their actions were a critical element in bringing about an agreement during the stalled peace talks.

A story of sacrifice, unity, and transcendence, Pray the Devil Back to Hell honors the strength and perseverance of the women of Liberia. Inspiring, uplifting, and most of all motivating, it is a compelling testimony of how grass-roots activism can alter the history of nations. (Credit: Pray the Devil Back to Hell Official Website)

Women and Hollywood: You and Gini seem to have a real collaborative relationship beyond the typical producer/director.

Gini Reticker: Abby and I hadn’t seen each other for years and we ran into each just after Abby had been to Liberia. We were totally on the same page about what was important in the story. It was wonderful to have her and she was also respectful of me in the edit room. She would make suggestions that respected my experience. It’s been an incredibly dynamic relationship.

GR: One of the main characters in the film, Leymah Gbowee, says that [former President] Charles Taylor could pray the devil out of hell and it was such a great expression. That’s what the women did by banding together—they prayed the devil back to hell. I don’t think that it was only Charles Taylor as the man, but it was the evil force they saw. The country had lost its moral compass and the women came forward and said, “Hey, let’s get this under control.”

AD: Yes, it seemed easier rather than having to go to people and ask for money. It gave me nimbleness and an ability to react more quickly and to think independently without having to answer to anybody.

AD: We spent around $800,000. It was not an easy shoot. There is no power in Liberia so you need generators. We had to build our own sets and I was not about to go without insurance. As the producer, I felt very responsible for everyone and their safety. And Gini is well respected, as is Kirsten Johnson—the director of photography—and these are people who should be paid appropriately.

W&H: Talk a bit about what you’ve learned from your first foray into the movie business.

AD: I didn’t have a lot of the problems women have because I didn’t need to go and ask for money. I didn’t have to talk to anyone in charge of the purse strings and convince them as to why this was important because I knew this was a tough sell. Even if there are women in charge they are still accountable to men. So they are very averse to taking risks especially if it’s seen as a “women’s thing.” It’s difficult to get anybody in the mainstream media to understand this. That’s why I felt I was uniquely positioned to get this done.

W&H: Can you talk about working as a woman director and any difficulties you have faced.

GR: For me, working in documentaries has been really easy and it’s manageable with having a family, which has been really nice because I had some control over my career. I’ve always been drawn to women’s issues. Before I made documentaries, I worked in women’s health care and that is what drew me to my first film. I think that working in documentaries has been the ideal profession for me.

W&H: You’ve been involved in women’s issues for a long time but never felt compelled to tell a story before.

AD: I’ve felt compelled to tell a story before just not compelled enough to do it.

AD: Everything lined up on this one. Part of it is how old my children are and how much time I had. This really was a story that was going to be erased from the historical records that was really worth holding onto.

AD: Yesterday I was talking to a high school class after a screening and asked them if they heard of Sacagawea and of course they had. They had, because there were women who worked and resurfaced the memory of her. She was not in the historical records when I was in high school. The persistent manner we have defined as authority excludes women—if they don’t look authoritative they don’t get captured in the media and then don’t get converted into the historical record. We clearly knew what was going on in Liberia. The news media didn’t look at what the women were doing as authoritative, so they simply did not point their cameras in that direction. We had no problems finding the footage of the killing, the shooting, and the maiming, but when the women were working for peace the cameras were not pointed in that direction. That tells us a great deal about what the news media thinks is worth telling and how much of what genuinely happens do we get to hear.

W&H: You mentioned before that we tend to see women in Africa as victims, not through their accomplishments, and that it was an important for you to tell this positive story.

GR: Most of the media you see on Africa portrays Africa and Africans as victims and not agents of their own lives. I feel that the people that I met there are just like you and me. As a documentary filmmaker, I am always drawn to what I have in common with someone rather than that which makes us different. The common bond of humanity is fascinating and so I was hell bent on making sure the women were able to tell their own story and were portrayed in the way I saw them. That way it is much easier to be inspired by them.

W&H: Our country is not aware of the global women’s movement, and you have an opportunity to bring international feminist issues to this country.

AD: I don’t think it will be hard. I tell people how the women in Kurdistan and Georgia wept and then wrote a peace agenda when they saw the film. I think this will be very appealing to women if we get it to them through the right medium, through the right messenger, and in the right form.

AD: We are going to work on finding the right messengers on TV, radio, and the Internet to bring this message to women.

W&H: How are you going to get the film out there? Do you have a distributor?

AD: I’m not going to a distributor with my hat in my hand begging them to distribute the film. If we don’t get a good deal, we will distribute it ourselves.

W&H: Hollywood doesn’t seem to be interested in women’s stories. What are your feelings about that?

GR: I think it’s a case of blindness to a real market, to a real hunger. That’s the response we are getting from this film. There is a hunger for stories that are more hopeful, that show a different side of things. The distribution of this film will be fascinating. We will try to have a theatrical release, but we are getting requests from people who want to fill movie theaters around the country. We’re getting more requests to show the film than we can deal with at this time. We are trying to harness all that and also look at alternative distribution models, but I think we will probably do a hybrid and do everything. I would have to say hats off to Abby because she has enormous aspirations and energy and she is really committed to this film and to the ideas behind it.

AD: The opportunities are vast—through educational institutions, religious institutions, girls clubs, youth organizations, and women’s organizations—and there is a curriculum for each one of these groups.

W&H: Many times people say movies are just movies, and that they don’t have the power to make change and to affect people.

AD: Movies are just movies if that’s how you go about making them. Of all the media we have, this is the closest in tone and feeling to the dream that comes from the deepest part of ourselves. We do such a disservice to ourselves by not using this medium with the respect it deserves, because it innately has enormous power to address our deepest needs values and longings. That’s why my uncle (Walt Disney) was very good at what he did. He understood that film had enormous power—to go right into the center of who a person was. That’s why I wanted to make this film. I couldn’t write this as a book and I couldn’t go around the world and tell people the story. You needed to have everything come together in music and visuals and sound in the way it does in this film, and I think Gini has done an effective job in making sure that the whole thing coheres.

AD: I’m not sure. I know he was a man of his time in many ways, politically he was very conservative and he was afraid of communists. But I also know he had a good heart, and I don’t think this film is about politics—it appeals to people, without politics. Sometimes you need to strip away the politics and restore the dialogue. I think he’d love it, in that way.

GR: The response so far has been tremendous. It has exceeded my expectations. I feel that people are being inspired in all sorts of different ways that I could never have imagined. There are people who see this as instrumental to doing peace work. I woke up yesterday morning to an email from women in Tbilisi, Georgia, saying that they had seen the film and had shown it to other women. Their region is having heightened militarism with ethnic overtones and they decided to take up the mantle of the women of Liberia and are starting their own peace movement. What could be better than that! Women in Sudan say it’s going to change their lives. On that level, it’s beyond my wildest hopes.

GR: Abby and I are continuing to work together and are co-producing a four-hour series on women in conflict for Wide Angle on PBS titled Women, War and Peace (www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/).