Woman see lot of things
is an experimental documentary about three female ex-child combatants
who were participants in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars of
the 1990s.
During these decade-long civil wars,
numerous girls were abducted, raped and forcibly recruited. Others
volunteered in order to find protection. They were used as fighters,
sex-slaves and labourers by all parties to the conflicts. In addition
to combat duties, many were subject to constant sexual abuse; some
taken as ‘wives’ by rebel commanders, impregnated and forced to
brutalize others.
The ones who survived the wars lost
their childhood and schooling. They have undergone a process of
transformation, intensified by their maturing during the wars. While
trying to reintegrate into society, a lot were, and some still are,
rejected. Due to the lack of gender equality and women rights,
condemnations and stigmatization - for having been rebels, having
‘rebel babies’ or having been raped and used by other men - are common.
The result of the process these women have undergone has been the
creation of a new sector in the population, equipped with skills, needs
and views, and confronted with a different set of social mores. A
distinctive example would be the strong sense of independence they
developed during the war.
Anita Jackson, Mahade Pako and Chris
Conteh come from different social backgrounds. They had different roles
in the wars, and found themselves after the wars in contrasting
situations, and having different views. With strong and clear
expressive skills, they invite us to understand their lives in post-war
Sierra Leone, and the psychophysical adjustments they have undertaken
in order to come to terms with their experiences.
The principle of maintaining freedom
of speech was strictly adhered to, as the aim of the film is to
sensitize and convey to the viewer these women’s way of living in the
past and present, without interpretations.
This film challenges methods of
production and visual aesthetics. It contains unique sound work,
hand-drawn animation, and live-action, stressing the extensive
‘story-telling’ skills of the three women.
This documentary is the third and
last artwork produced in the frame of the Face_WSLOT (Woman See Lot of
Things) project, following an interdisciplinary art installation, a
book and a music CD, launched and published in 2004. From it's incomes,
the project finances tertiary education scholarships for women in
Sierra Leone (TESI-WSL).
In order to start communicating, the
role of the women in the project needed to be explained to them. Due to
the fact that such art projects are not well-known in Sierra Leone, the
process was described to the women as one in which they were going to
share their experiences as artists. Their role was to tell their story
in the best way possible. Furthermore, this was a job offer. The women
would work as professional artists and be duly rewarded
financially.
There is more than one way to
communicate. More than one way to tell a story. It was the intention,
from the very start of this project, to work in different media.
Sounds, words and actions – all of these needed to be documented. The
recording and filming took place both outdoors and indoors. Outdoors -
the focus was on the women in their own environment and their everyday
interaction with it. The environment became part of the story, part of
the collected material. The indoor activities took place in a
hangar-type space located in Freetown, which was specially converted
into a temporary recording and filming studio.
Each woman in turn was asked to share
her experiences through various modes of performance. For this purpose,
a whole schedule of activities was set. Recounting a certain
experience, talking in different languages (all the women are
multi-lingual), acting out scenes from their past, pointing out
key-locations on maps, singing and dancing – all of these were used in
order to give the women every opportunity and means to share their past
and present realities.
In many cases, forms of communication bore a strong relationship to the story told.
One instance of this connection is
the use of pharmaceutical objects by Anita Jackson as model elements,
in order to depict the events and causes for the split between the RUF
and the SLA factions and the complexity of the situation. The use of
objects in this case was natural, as it invoked the feeling of
organisation, order and strategic planning. The choice of objects for
demonstrating an experience from the past usually related to the skills
and talents a woman had. The objects were part of her specific life
routine, such as tie-dye techniques or medical equipment. Another
example of relevance of medium to the context was the use of maps in
order to determine the routes and places each woman had passed through
during her life. Materials served as language. Language served as
material for the artworks.