April 21st, 2011 | In seven days a celebration will begin; be a part of it!

In just ONE week’s time, on April 27, 2011, Sierra Leone will honor its 50th anniversary of independence, and there is a lot to celebrate.

Barmmy Boy behind the camera shooting 'They Resisted.'

Barmmy Boy behind the camera shooting 'They Resisted.'

We are officially launching our new production initiative, ‘Picturing Independence: A Positive Revolution.’ And, to top it off we are celebrating it all by jumping into the social funding arena, by launching WeOwnTV’s first Kickstarter campaign. And, of course, when we get social, we think of you. So, here we are reaching out to all of you—our loyal supporters and fans—to make sure it’s a wild success, worthy of celebration.

Here’s what you need to know about our Kickstarter campaign, ‘Picturing Independence: A Positive Revolution:’

* Our campaign is officially launched and all the details can be founded by heading over to our page on Kickstarter.
* The campaign was created to support of our year-long production initiative of the same title, ‘Picturing Independence: A Positive Revolution.’  The goal of the initiative is to create a group of short films that celebrate the Sierra Leone of yesterday and today. These works explore the idea of independence and rebuilding a positive national and cultural identity. WeOwnTV filmmakers are writing and producing both narrative and documentary films for this initiative.
* Our goal for the 50-day campaign is $15,000. Together, we can do it.
* We are collaborating with Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars on the campaign. Their tour is called ‘The Positive Revolution Tour’ and the band is excited to bring the spirit of Sierra Leone’s celebration to their audience and to this effort. We produced a video together before the band left Freetown and we look forward to sharing it with you next week before the 50th celebration.

Ways you can support campaign:

* Be one of the first 50 people to donate. We will do something special for you, in addition to the donation awards you will already receive as a thank you for your donation (Kickstarter is cool like that).
* Spread the word – we definitely want everyone to know, so tell a friend (or two, or three).
* Help us socialize the campaign: like it, share it; digg it and tweet all about it.
* Tell your friends that they can “Produce an Episode” with a donation of $2000 (USD) they can be the executive producer of an episode of “Picturing Independence.” How cool is that?…their name, a part of history!
* And, of course, remember that no amount is too small and all donations help us progress to the goal.

2011 is going to be a year we look back on as a turning point for our organization. It’s truly incredible what is being accomplished. Your continued support and encouragement has made it all possible.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Fundraising, News, Updates

March 22nd, 2011 | So long Austin, it was grand: Banker bids farewell to SXSW 2011

Out of the fire and into to the rain – back in SF after a great week @ SXSW. It was an amazing week of inspiration and I’m definitely retiring filled up with new ideas. Our panel may not have sold as many tickets as Charlie Sheen’s upcoming ‘My Violent Torpedo of Truth -defeat is not an option‘ tour, BUT it was a great event with mad knowledge and electric exchange of ideas. We did have a great turnout of interesting folks, excited to talk about video and new media in the developing world. Hands down it was the people I met down in Austin that made it such a great trip.

The day before our session,  I attended a panel, “Defining The Diaspora: Global Collaboration and Social Change,” led by the founder of Nomadic Wax, Ben Herson.  Nomadic Wax is a fair trade music, film and events production company with a focus on presenting politically and socially conscious music from around the world. After the event I met Hanifa Washington who is the New Media & Special Projects Coordinator from the ‘Amistad America‘  project.

La Amistad was a slave ship that left Sierra Leone and its history was set, when aboard a mutiny occurred in 1839, led by a Sierra Leonean slave by the name of Sengbe Pieh. The Amistad America project is an educational project dedicated to teaching the lessons of the Amistad incident. They have a 140-foot traditional wooden schooner replica of the Amistad that was built at Mystic Seaport Museum and launched in 2000. This summer they are revisiting the triangular trans-Atlantic slave route. Check out link to project here. I had previously heard about the project, so it was amazing to meet Hanifa in person. Hopefully, we can get a WeOwnTV filmmaker on the boat for its next voyage!

There were also a lot of great folks who showed up to our panel including Rachel Hamann. Rachel contacted me on Facebook before the event. Her husband just started working at an orphanage in Freetown run by an organization called The Raining Season. She was preparing for her first trip to Freetown and a potential move with her family in the coming year. It will be nice to have yet another friend in Sierra Leone when we visit.

Well that’s all for now folks. Please take the time to check out some of these interesting projects AND stay tuned to WeOwnTV; we are gearing up for the 50th independence celebration and have a lot of great things planned between now and then.

More soon.

Posted in From Banker White, News, Updates

March 14th, 2011 | Banker Reports from SXSW and Introduces Two New WeOwnTV Mentors

Woke up to a little rain in Austin yesterday morning, but it was still warm. Started the day @ a panel called ‘Unexpected Non-fiction Storytelling,’ which was inspiring innovation that mixed well with the early morning coffee…it filled me new ideas. Check out a few stand-out projects I saw:

Tommy Pallotta presented Collapsus a ‘three panel, mixed narrative story line, with interactive documentary components.’

NFB Canada presented what Ron McLaughlin described as an “interactive parable with live data visualizations and a presentation of collected scientific data.‘

Online celeb, Ze Frank’s  project where he invited people to leave painful experiences on a phone messaging system.

WeOwnTV Mentors

WeOwnTV Mentors: (LtoR) Alluspa, Kanku, Earnest, Mustapha, Tyson, Fanta, Arthur and Frank (front).

After this session and others at SXSW I am struck with a sense of community and the idea that as an audience member and a speaker I am part of a fabric of learning from and giving back. On a smaller scale, we have brought that sense to our team in Sierra Leone. When you have been taught, it’s your responsibility to teach.

Recently, we introduced Michaella, who joined the WeOwnTV team as a mentor last summer. Today, in honor of our own “giving back” to the community through sharing our experience at a SXSW Core Conversation this afternoon, I would like to introduce to you two more talented young Sierra Leonean who joined the team last summer…meet Frank M’Cormack and Mustapha Brima.

Posted in From Banker White, News, Updates

March 12th, 2011 | The WeOwnTV “family” collaborating

Banker here reporting as promised from SXSW 2011.

Good morning warm weather. I already can hear live music before noon─the air smells like spring flowers and BBQ─good to be back here in the lone star state. Definitely bringing back memories of our 2006 trip. I know I have reported multiple times that 2011 marks the 50th Anniversary of Independence for Sierra Leone. These kinds of milestones are exciting, a reason to celebrate and a reason to take pause. Celebrating independence is about celebrating standing on your own and your individual freedoms.

On another note, I’ve been reflecting on the collaborative philosophy that has gotten our program and group to where we are today. WeOwnTV has always been about working together as a group, about being mutually accountable to each other and about functioning like a family.

Fostering these things is essential to how we are working at WeOwnTV. All the talented folks both in North America (yes, that’s a nod to our Canadians) and in Sierra Leone who have given their individual ideas, their creativity, their advice and their hard work during the last few years created this new family.

Almost eight years ago Chris Velan, Zach Niles and I traveled to refugee camps in Guinea to make a documentary about the Sierra Leonean civil war seen through the eyes of a musician. In meeting the band our project both pulled into focus, but it also

Chris Velan with Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars working on Inez.

Chris Velan with Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars working on Inez.

expanded to become so much more than what we had envisioned. We have all remained close during the last eight years and have worked together in different ways.

Today, I write to highlight a recent collaboration that brought us all together again in fall 2010. Chris Velan invited the All Stars to record a song with him while he was in a Boston studio working on his new album.

Please visit the wonderful, media-rich site for the INEZ recording project here. It’s definitely worth a look and a listen.

Proceeds from sales of the recording are going to support the WeOwnTV project, “Meet Sweet Salone: Celebrating and Documenting 50 years of Independence.”

The program is a 12-episode documentary series that explores the Sierra Leone of yesterday and today. WeOwnTV and the SLRAS band will also be collaborating in various ways to bring these stories and the spirit of celebration to the US during their upcoming tour.

Chris and Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars both have new albums coming out and many shows scheduled this spring and summer. Please go check out the infectious music of these talented musicians and wonderful friends.

p.s. calling all San Francisco folks – Chris is playing in San Francisco @ the Boom Boom Room 8:00 PM 3/26/2011. That’s this next Thursday…see you there.

Posted in Backstory, From Banker White, Music Video, News, Updates

March 11th, 2011 | Off to my next SXSW Adventure

It’s Banker here. I’m getting ready to head out the door to Austin and I am very excited…so I am here to share some thoughts with our WeOwnTV friends and family.

Banker with Nature Filming the SXSW 2008 Adventures.

Banker with Nature Filming the SXSW 2006 Adventures.

SXSW has always held a special place in my heart. In 2006, we screened Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars and in the same year our website was nominated for an Interactive Festival Award and the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars band played on the world music main stage. I remember city-wide excitement, as if the whole city was celebrating the festival together—from official festival events and venues to local bars, restaurants and busking musicians on 6th Street.

Check out the memories captured via video: Sierra Leone – Refugee All Stars- Fame via SXSW 2008 Austin Texas

SXSW 2011 will be my first trip back since the 2006 festival and a lot has changed. The festival was a new beginning for the band and their first record contract came out of that experience. They have been touring internationally since and are about to release their third album which was recorded in Brooklyn this past January.

SXSW 2008, SLRAS with Zach Niles (L) and Chris Velan (bottom right).

SXSW 2006, SLRAS with Zach Niles (L) and Chris Velan (bottom right).

For Sierra Leone, they elected a new president in September 2007, Ernest Bai Koroma and the country has seen progress, peace and development in the years since. 2011 also marks their 50th Anniversary of Independence and there is a lot to celebrate.

In 2008, we received a grant from grant from Creative Capital , for a new project called “WeOwnTV.” A collaborative film-making project that has launched a three-year collaboration, and it still feels like the beginning.

Maybe SXSW will again work its magic with us and send us into new realms of possibility.

I’m excited to report that SXSW Interactive has scheduled WeOwnTV as a core conversation called “This is Our Generation: WeOwnTV Sierra Leone.” We will be sharing curriculum highlights from our workshops and getting into some of the very exciting work that the group in Sierra Leone is doing now. I couldn’t be more proud of the group. In just three years we have grown a rough and tumble group with no media training, but with something to say, to a highly productive and talented production entity, producing a weekly hour for the national TV station, as well as numerous other ambitious narrative and documentary work. Truth be told, I have learned a lot from them….

If you are in Austin this Monday attending SXSW, please join us at our Core Conversation.

Posted in Backstory, From Banker White, News, Updates

February 27th, 2011 | Production news from Freetown: Hello Good People of the World

This is Arthur Pratt reporting to you from the WeOwnTV: Sierra Leone Media Center in Freetown.

2011 is a big year for Sierra Leone. Here at WeOwnTV, we have code-named it ‘the Year of Manifestation’ and have dedicated our efforts to telling important stories about our country. Throughout the year, I will report on the production of these stories.

Barmmy Boy behind the camera shooting scene for 'The Resisted.'

Barmmy Boy behind the camera shooting scene for 'The Resisted.'

At this moment, it is my pleasure to inform you that the team has just returned from a successful shoot for the film ‘They Resisted.’ The project is the most ambitious film we have attempted so far. We planned production during February as our way to celebrate Black History Month. Our history as Sierra Leoneans is tied to the Atlantic Slave trade in many ways; notably our nation’s capitol city, Freetown, was named after the new colony and settlement of freed African American slaves established in 1792.

Historically the accounts of the slave trade have not been just to many us. They portray early Africa as a continent of people that were uncivilized and without interests of their own, incapable of protesting when treated unjustly. We want the world to know that WE RESISTED.

Many know the famous story of the Amistad in which a heroic Sierra Leonean, Mende slave named Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinque) led a revolt upon a slave Spanish vessel named La Amistad. This happened in 1839 in the later the years of the slave trade.

We believe that there were countless stories of resistance and revolt in the three centuries of the earlier Atlantic slave trade. ‘They Resisted’ is set during that period of the slave trade and is dedicated to those untold stories.

Rehearsing for 'They Resisted.'

Rehearsing for 'They Resisted.'

For months, we have been working as a team researching and planning for film production. All costumes and objects in the film reflect the cultural traditions of the times. The story is about a small; seaside village that resisted and fought back. We shot the film in Kent village and its chief was very helpful and supportive of the project.

In addition to producing the film we shot in parallel a documentary that explores the specific history of Kent Village as it relates to the slave trade. Stay tuned for more information about how you can see ‘They Resisted’ and other projects we are producing throughout the year.

Shooting 'They Resisted'

Scene from 'They Resisted.'

To see more behind the scenes photos of the ‘They Resisted’ shoot check out the photo album.

Note from WeOwnTV: We are looking for financial support for the WeOwnTV productions in Sierra Leone. There are big plans for the near future, be a part of them a reality and DONATE TODAY!

Posted in From Sierra Leone, From the Desk of Arthur Pratt, News

January 1st, 2011 | Season Greetings from Freetown

As the clock strikes midnight in Freetown on 12/31/10, Barmmy Boy delivers a gift to the team in North America.  Enjoy his freestyle music-video created to wish the world a happy and peaceful 2011. Warning…you will want to get up and dance. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

Posted in From Sierra Leone, Music Video, Updates

December 17th, 2010 | Banker is Smiling: Spreading the Good Word of WeOwnTV

It’s Friday, December 17 and I just hung-up a Skype call to the Media Center in Freetown with Arthur Pratt. I am smiling.

Smiling as I acknowledge it has been only four months since we opened the Media Center but so much has happened…smiling, because Arthur just gave me a rundown of what they are up to and the group’s excitement is contagious…smiling, because November and December have also been exciting outside of Sierra Leone with WeOwnTV short films being featured at film festivals here in the US and abroad.

Here’s a little recap:

* In November, Zach Niles attended the Camden International film festival. Representing WeOwnTV, he screened a short film before Rebecca Richman Cohen’s fascinating feature documentary about the Sierra Leone International War Crimes Tribunal, War Don Don.

Film still from HUSLTER which screened at Cine Experimental de Madrid.

Film still from HUSLTER which screened at Cine Experimental de Madrid.

* The Experimental Film of Madrid event (Cine Experimental de Madrid) dedicated an entire program to WeOwnTV short films, and I spent an amazing week in Madrid as a festival juror while representing WeOwnTV — Hablás Español?

* The team in Sierra Leone is gaining recognition as a significant contributor to local arts and media. Our program ‘Meet Sweet Salone’–Celebrating and Documenting Sierra Leone’s 50 Years of Independence has been honored by the 50th Anniversary Committee in Sierra Leone. They have pledged to support the development of WeOwnTV film and video projects to share stories of the Sierra Leone of today with national and global audiences as the country celebrates its Golden Anniversary in 2011. We are currently in the funding phase of this milestone programming; please consider supporting ‘Meet Sweet Salone’ with a donation.

* We are developing a weekly TV show that has drawn interest from SLBC, Sierra Leone’s national television station. The program would highlight current issues impacting the country from the youth perspective and also feature content from ‘Meet Sweet Salone’ initiative; in-depth human interest stories, in-studio interviews, audience submissions, narrative short films and historical reflections.

* The group continues to produce and develop new projects. In December, they began production on ‘They Resisted,’ a short-narrative film about a slave-era revolution. In parallel, they are researching a complimentary documentary piece about Bounce Island, an area with strong historical significance tied to the slave-trade.

* Last but not least I think it’s worth mentioning we reached our social-media goal for getting the word out, by reaching 500 fans on our Facebook page. Thanks for honoring us with your “Like.”

We plan to ride the momentum of the last several months into 2011 and are looking forward to achieving many great milestones with the group in Sierra Leone in the coming year. Thank you for your continued support and encouragement…may you be smiling with us.

Posted in From Banker White, From Sierra Leone, Fundraising, News, Updates

December 8th, 2010 | WeOwnTV: Making Art Make a Difference in Sierra Leone (CCA News)

Our own Banker White sits down with Jason Engelund of California College of the the Arts (his alma mater) to share the work WeOwnTV is doing in Sierra Leone.

Banker White with WeOwnTV at work in Sierra Leone

Banker White with WeOwnTV at work in Sierra Leone

Excerpt from the article: CCA alumnus Banker White (MFA 2000) is a documentary filmmaker. You may know him as the director of Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, about a group of Sierra Leonean musicians who gained international renown and landed a record deal.

These days White is busy as the head of WeOwnTV. Headquartered in San Francisco, the innovative nonprofit works with young adults in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in West Africa, teaching them how to record their lives and stories using documentary and narrative film. White crafted the program with a former refugee and child soldier, Alhaji Jeffrey Kamara (aka Black Nature).

To read more of the article, click here.

Posted in News, Uncategorized

November 25th, 2010 | Thanksgiving 2010 — We are thankful!

From all of us at the WeOwnTV family, from the youth filmmakers and staff in Sierra Leone to the administrative staff and faculty in the United States, we give thanks to our board of advisors, our partners, our donors and to our enthusiastic cheerleaders.

It is with your support during the last two years that we have accomplished so very much. Together, most recently, we opened a Media Center in central Freetown that offers a safe place for the youth filmmakers to create and explore their stories. This month alone they plan to complete three short films.

In addition, we have added several new filmmakers to our “team” in Sierra Leone and we will introduce them to you shortly, as we are currently putting the final touches on their intro videos.

In the meantime if you haven’t had a chance to “meet” our two fearless leaders in Sierra Leone, please take a moment to watch videos introducing Arthur Pratt and Lansana Mansaray (aka Barmmy Boy).

Meet Arthur Pratt

Meet Barmmy Boy

It is under their leadership that daily operations of the media center thrive and that WeOwnTV has already been hired to work on multiple film and video projects for NGOs, advertising agencies, hotels and other businesses.

There is so much more to share and we will soon. For now, know that the entire team appreciates all you have done for WeOwnTV…together we have accomplished so much and the best is yet to come.

With gratitude, Team WeOwnTV

Posted in Backstory, News

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »