Washington, DC — In the aftermath of a devastating period of civil war and genocide in the 1990s, the challenges of nation building are the hallmark of today's Rwanda. Currently in Rwanda, the need for reconciliation between the Tutsi and majority Hutus, the establishment of a viable economy, and advancement of a stable political order are all issues that are being tackled. As 70 percent of Rwanda's population is female, the women of Rwanda have become the central force in the effort to rebuild, recover and overcome.
In an episode premiering on PBS Thursday, July 22 at 9 P.M, WIDE ANGLE explores the role of women in the rebuilding of Rwanda and the challenges they face. Pamela Hogan, the series' producer speaks to AllAfrica's Eunice Ajambo about the motivation behind the making of the episode and the challenges faced.
Why the title LADIES FIRST?
We were looking for a title that would intrigue people and make them want to see the show, first and foremost. We actually talked quite a bit about the title. We had many different titles before we settled on that one. Part of what our producers learned when they were in Africa was that the women in Rwanda call each other ladies, and throughout our film, the women who were participating in the filming are saying, `The ladies did this and the ladies did that.' The women in Parliament call each other ladies, and the mayor in the film greets people by saying, `My fellow ladies.' The word "ladies" was specific to Rwanda and we thought it would be kind of fun to use it in that sense.
Our producers also discovered that the women who they profiled in this film feel that if women take their place in leadership positions, they automatically care about everyone else:the family, the men and they will bring along everyone, if they take up their place.
Why did you film in Rwanda?
We are always looking for stories that are not just on the front page, although some of our films are about front-page stories. We do 12 or 13 shows every summer running prime time on Thursday night on PBS nation-wide. There are stories that touch on front-page issues, but we also always take more work on our part on issues that are flying under the radar and aren't reported that much on the mainstream media, but that engage what we think are really important issues that viewers and Americans need to be aware of. In Africa, we are always looking for the under-reported stories. This year, instead of Congo, we were looking for a story that might touch on something that people do know about, but that might suggest a trend or might engage an upbeat aspect.
One of the challenges in drawing viewers to a show about Africa is a stereotypical reaction that `Oh no! It's going be doom and gloom. I know that I should probably watch it and its something that I should want to know about, but I had a tough day at work and would want to watch something a little more escapist.' It's always really fantastic when you stumble across an upbeat story that reports an important political or social trend.
What happened was that I went to an award ceremony of the UN to honor a South African female judge who had made an important ruling with respect to the use of genocide as a weapon in the Rwandan case. I went because I like to show up at these global moments and you never know whom you might meet and what story you might hear about. There were a number of distinguished women from all over the world, and I was just going from woman to woman saying, `What should we be thinking about, what should we know about and what stories do you think are interesting or important?"
A number of them had just returned from Rwanda and they said that the story that nobody is reporting is that women are 48% of the legislature, the largest percentage in any legislative body in the world. We started doing research and sent in an associate producer over to scout and meet people, and see if people are open to being filmed and see if there were interesting things to film. With every step, we got more and more excited about it. It obviously was a terrific story with many layers and a lot of resonance and also fun to be ahead of the story.
What is the process of making such a documentary and how involved were the Rwandan authorities?
We've made films in a lot of countries and some are very difficult to make films in or the governments are very controlling. They require a lot of permits. You have to tell them exactly where you are going, and sometimes they send a minder etc. Rwanda was incredibly open arms. They made it very simple, and nothing was difficult in terms of the permit process. Our reporters had total freedom, and that was a great thing about working there. It made it a lot easier.
There are lots of associations involved. You cannot imagine the thousands of e-mails, phone calls, letters and faxes that go out in advance to everybody involved in the U.S. and in Rwanda. What starts to happen as you do dozens of phone calls is that people start to say the same things. Once more than one person mentions something you start to feel that it sounds like a pretty good lead.
After our associate producer came back from Rwanda, she suggested a number of possible story ideas, and then we decided that we did have something good and we would commit to it. We then hired a wonderful director named Gini Reticker, who had just been nominated for an academy award and is quite well known for her films about women and feminism. She seemed like a good match for the subject and she was incredibly excited to take it on. Then she hired a female cinematographer Christine Johnson, who is also very acclaimed. With our all female team, we sent them back to capture these stories.
Things take a little bit longer in Rwanda. While there for a month in production, our scouts had nine flat tires. We also try to save money on PBS budgets by fundraising and cutting costs. We decided that instead of putting the filming crew in a hotel, which would cost several thousand dollars, they would rent a house and then they would have meetings there as well. The problem with the house is that the electrical generator kept breaking down. So half the time, they were sitting in the dark by candlelight trying to figure out their next day's interviews and schedule. The filming crew had tremendous cooperation from everyone there and really everyone that they talked to about being part of the film was very open.
How did you find the interviewees?
We had sort of settled on a number of profiles of people that we thought would show the different facets of women emerging as Rwanda's leaders. For example, a woman who owns her own coffee export business, one of the female MPs, who ran against the men and was able to win her seat, not in the specific female election.
We were also really intrigued by the story of a mayor, Florence, who had figured out that although there were wonderfully new progressive property laws allowing women to inherit property for the first time, too many women - she felt - were not taking advantage of them because they were living with their partners, raising children and not getting legally married.
She started asking around and she realized that one of the reasons was that nobody could afford the $9 license fee. When she threw a free wedding ceremony and paid for it, 600 people came the first time. She felt that was a very good idea and she's been doing it regularly ever since. We thought that would be a symbolic story. It was colorful and touching, and it would show the shifting laws and how they are impacting women. When you are making a film, you look for interesting things that can be happening while you are there. You do not want just have interviews with everybody talking.
The process involves a lot of trust on the side of people being interviewed. Ideally, you just follow people around from morning till night because the most interesting moments that you cannot predict can happen any time. So you just want to be there documenting, hoping that they forget you are there. If all things go well, that is how things work. In Rwanda, the film crew was not always able to spend as long as they wanted in each location because even though the distances are short, the roads have very many potholes.
I think Rwandans know that the spotlight is on them because of what happened in the past. They found a very welcome attitude and I think that a lot of pride under these incredibly difficult conditions that they are pulling together and moving ahead. One of the biggest observations that the producers came back with is that you would not just believe how hard people work in Rwanda. People have two jobs and work seven days a week, and apparently the GNP is growing. It was 9 percent last year. So the producers came back transformed. They said it was a life changing experience being there.
Besides the language barrier and transportation problems, what other challenges did you encounter?
Two challenges come to my mind. This is a film about social change and so making it dramatic is a challenge. Social change happens slowly. It's very subtle and does not happen over night. How do you make it dynamic? And how do you express what it used to be like? You are not really going to have something happening in front of the camera. If its war time, you can see bullets flying, but if its people's values changing, how do you see that unfold in front of the camera?
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Another challenge that they faced is that we went in there very much determined that we were not going to make a film about the genocide. Everyone knows about the genocide and a number of wonderful, heartbreaking films, including Front Line, have been made about it. The challenge was that the more they got to know about Rwanda, it just became clear that the past is part of the present, and the genocide is part of every breath that everybody takes. So it had to be a story about what came before, in order to be about a story about what is going ahead. So figuring out that balance was a challenge because as soon as you started to talk to people about what had happened to them that became all you talked about, and it's completely understandable. It was a surprise that the film reflects a lot more about the past, but I think it's the right choice.
What is the targeted audience? Do you have viewers in Africa?
I am not sure if we have something setup with the Rwandan government, but we will distribute the film internationally. Today we just confirmed that USAID is going to have a screening in Washington at the end of the month. They are going to invite 100 people that work at USAID around the world to come and see the film and they are going to ask us to speak. They think that the people that work with USAID and with agricultural challenges ought to be aware of what is happening on the ground in Rwanda.
What do you wish to accomplish by showing the ongoing series?
The greatest contribution these films could make is to make our viewers feel interested in the rest of the world; to make them to start to see the connections between their lives and other people's lives; to really start to see the interconnections between all the countries in the world and to start to feel curious about learning more about other countries. We are in such an interdependent world that I think we have to play catch up in America to know about the rest of the world as they know about each other and about us.
I think film is just a fantastic way to engage people emotionally and then the minds will follow. Something special about our films is that they are very driven by stories, which are very easy to follow and they are also very character driven, so that makes them very accessible in a way that a report cannot do.
