Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Africa remains a huge destination for our readers (just look at the Gold List), and judging from reader mail, it seems that we can never cover the continent enough. But when it comes to dealing with some of the other stories coming out of Africa, most people--including us--sometimes don't want to hear it.
If you find yourself falling into the latter category, run, don't walk, to whatever movie theater is lucky enough to screen Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a documentary about the truly remarkable Liberian women (both Christian and Muslim) who came together to help end a bloody, decades-old civil war.
Every day for a year or so, these women protested at Monrovia's fish market, trying to get warlord-president Charles Taylor's attention. He finally agreed to attend peace talks in Ghana in 2003, and the women caught a glimpse of hope. When those talks stalled, though, around 2,000 women staged a silent protest with nothing more than strong convictions. And when that didn't work, they barricaded the site of the peace talks and announced they would not move until a deal was done. And so it was.
What began in 2003 as power from the sidelines is now turning into power from the main arena. Liberia is now governed by Africa's first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Leymah Gbowee, one of the main subjects of the film, received a Blue Ribbon for Peace from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and she is now building a women's peace organization in Ghana that will support women who want to prevent and end conflicts across the West African subregion. Asatu Bah Kenneth, another peace protester, is Liberia's Deputy Chief of Police (the Chief of Police is also a woman). These women are the movers and the shakers.
Directed by Academy Award nominee Gini Reticker and produced by Abigail Disney who, among many other things, founded the Daphne Foundation, Pray the Devil Back to Hell truly is a testament to the power of grassroots activism and a rebuke to all of us who have regarded many of the never-ending African conflicts as hopeless.
Check out the schedule for a list of upcoming screenings in the U.S.
Further reading:
* Reticker and Disney are currently working a
series for Wide Angle and WNET tentatively called "Women and Children
First" about the changing role of women in conflict worldwide.
* The Class of
2006, one of Reticker's other projects, is a film about the first fifty women in Morocco to graduate
from an imam academy in Rabat.
* Condé Nast Traveler's 2008 World Savers Awards.
* Cast your vote for the 2009 World Savers Awards.
* Everything you need to know about voluntourism.
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