Project Summary:

WeOwnTV is a collaborative media project that promotes self-expression as a way to explore our shared humanity and bridge cultural divides. Our first program uses a community-engaged curriculum that teaches filmmaking techniques to a group of young Sierra Leonean ex-combatants and survivors of their country’s civil war. WeOwnTV will provide the technical support, encouragement and training that will allow these young adults to creatively produce their own media and share their experiences and ideas with the world.

The curriculum program was developed by the WeOwnTV filmmaking team in partnership with humanitarian fieldworkers from the region and between media advocacy programs in Sierra Leone and the Bay area Video Coalition in San Francisco.

The filmmakers from the ‘Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars’ documentary are embarking on a new project in 2009 entitled WeOwnTV .

REGIONAL OVERVIEW AND PROJECT RELEVANCE:

Having survived a horrific civil war in which over half of the country’s population was displaced, Sierra Leone has recently achieved a second peaceful election and is looking optimistically towards the future. UNAMSIL (United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone) was one of the largest and most successful peace keeping missions in the history of the UN.

Following this ongoing post-war success, the international community is looking to Sierra Leone to live up to its reputation as a humanitarian relief success story. As the international support withdraws, it is crucial that Sierra Leone has the tools in place to support this new democracy. We believe that a strong independent media is a crucial part of this picture.

FUTURE IMPACT AND SIGNIFICANCE:

As global communication technologies develop and have a wider reach into the third world, it is vital that those countries do not remain passive viewers, who are educated and entertained only by imported media. The digital divide between developed and developing nations is very real and all the more drastic in countries that are recovering from the devastating effects of war. But we are very optimistic about the potential to bridge this gulf. The Internet and new media technologies such as video-sharing sites and video capable mobile phones have the potential to democratize our global dialogue and bring more balance to the existing corporate media system. Providing a means for informed engagement with political debate, community concerns, and public issues fosters the idea that change comes from within and that an individual voice can have a positive and important role in shaping the future.

Part of the ‘WeOwnTV’ curriculum strategy is to partner with ongoing initiatives in Sierra Leone, to supplement these programs with the appropriate tools and technologies, and to provide training and encouragement so that they can thrive within their circumstance. In Sierra Leone, we have begun planning partnerships with Radio UNAMSIL, UNHCR (the UN refugee Agency), IRC (International Rescue Committee) and Talking Drum Studios – (a community based local radio station and project of the non-profit Search for Common Ground). We will be working with these organizations to select project participants. Applications will be sent to local schools, television stations, radio stations, and rehabilitation centers.

PRODUCTION TEAM PERSPECTIVE:

As a program we want to continually reinforce the idea that no one is more qualified to help Sierra Leone than Sierra Leoneans themselves. We want to encourage project participants to look within to find their voice. In Sierra Leone there are incredible oral traditions that exist within the culture and we hope that this tradition will fuel and inform the storytelling we are encouraging within the medium of film and video.
Back-story – ‘Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars’: The ‘WeOwnTV’ production team founded SodaSoap Productions in 2002 as we began production for the documentary film ‘Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars’ (2006) . The film tells the story of a group of Sierra Leonean musicians who met in a refugee camp and used music as way to give a voice and bring hope to their fellow refugees. The film garnered over a dozen international film festival awards and to date has been broadcast on television in North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Korea, south Africa and Uganda.

Prior to working on the ‘Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars’ film, all members of the production team had traveled and worked in West Africa. We are all also musicians and knew from our earliest discussions that music would be our entry point to tell a story that illuminated a more human understanding of a place we felt was very misunderstood. Music is a universal language that speaks in emotion; it transcends culture, language and almost any other gulf that we create and define ourselves by. We knew we could not look away from the modern tragedies plaguing the continent, so instead we moved towards the idea of focusing on musicians and giving voice to individuals who had been affected. The refugee emergency in West Africa, fueled by prolonged wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, was compelling because of the incredible size and cross-section of the population that was affected.

In the summer of 2002, after spending a month playing music in refugee camps in Guinea we met ‘The Refugee All Stars Band’ as they rehearsed in a mud hut in Sembakounya Refugee Camp set deep in the Guinean countryside. During our travels we had met many talented musicians with compelling stories, but we felt a special connection to the band from our first meeting and jam session. They were diverse in age and character, from a roguish rhythm guitar player in his 50s to an orphaned teenage rapper, but they had a common bond born through a collective history of war, loss and displacement. Their love and support for each other made them a family. They immediately recognized this film as an opportunity for their stories and music to be heard abroad, and this project quickly turned into what could best be described as a creative collaboration between the production team and the band. The band has told us that it was empowering to present themselves in the way that they wish to be seen – not as helpless victims, but as talented, loving, and ambitious people who refuse to accept the injustices around them.

Around the world, senseless conflicts continue to rip apart the lives of innocent civilians but it can be difficult to feel real compassion when tragedy is seen from a distance. Helping ‘Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars’ to tell their story was our way of trying to close that distance. WeOwnTV is a natural continuation of this work. We come to this new project with a deep personal conviction that art and self-expression are powerful ways explore and learn from our shared humanity.