12 months since the end of the largest Ebola outbreak in history and local heroes that played key roles in bringing the outbreak to an end, like gravedigger James Hamilton, seem long forgotten.
Shout Gladi Gladi is a documentary about hope. It tells the story of one woman's quest to cure fistula and save mother's lives in Africa. Shot in Malawi and Sierra Leone (just prior to the Ebola crisis) this is an intense portrait of the people suffering from fistula and the struggle of those who are not only trying to fix this condition but curtail it through better maternal health care. In addition, it is about women's empowerment, specifically through a radical device from BBOXX, a solar powered generator that provides the women not only with electricity in a region where there is none but also as a means to make money by charging cell phones.
The story of the ten-year battle to achieve fair representation for women in the governance of Sierra Leone is passionately revealed to us by three women from diverse backgrounds. Bernadette Lahai, Salamatu Kamara and Barbara Bangura share their stories of the impediments women face within the world of politics in Sierra Leone. Em Cooper’s exquisite oil painted animation combined with live-action video transforms issues of gender and politics into a compelling and thought-provoking viewing experience.
Having emerged from an 11-year civil war that left more than 50,000 people dead and two million displaced, Sierra Leone strives for a peaceful and democratic future. Since the end of conflict in 2002, the people of Sierra Leone have strived to build a democratic and peaceful society. The path remains difficult, with poverty entrenched, yet signs of progress, too often ignored by the international media, can also be found. Sierra Leone has held two consecutive democratic elections, and women and young people have taken the lead in creating an engaged civil society. This short film documents the progress Sierra Leone has made since the end of its brutal civil war and the hope of a new generation for creating a more just society.
The universe of the blind unveils in a boarding school for sightless children in West Africa, through their intimate lives, and courtroom. Much resurfaces in the penal but didactic court in an interconnected barrage of cases, as the blind try the blind, and expose recent events and the underlying motives. '...You bear too stubborn too strange, to hand over a friend that loves you,' the judge tells a witness. We see the table prefect accosted in court, and at the supper table too, and he's bitter.
A poor boy befriends a girl from a rich family who disapprove their relationship.
Ghosts of Amistad by Tony Buba is based on Marcus Rediker's The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (Penguin, 2012). It chronicles a journey to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the rebels who captured the slave schooner Amistad, to interview elders about local memory of the incident, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. The filmmakers rely on the knowledge of villagers, fishermen, and truck drivers to recover a lost history from below in the struggle against slavery, and to explore the African origins of the heroes of the Amistad incident.