October 31, 2012 -- Updated 1656 GMT (0056 HKT)
Filmmaker on risking his life
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Sorious Samura is an award-winning photojournalist and film-maker from Sierra Leone
- He is famous for embedding himself with his film's subjects to tell their stories
- Samura first came to prominence with his 2000 documentary, "Cry Freetown"
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(CNN) -- As he strode on stage to accept the 1999
Rory Peck award for hard news journalism, Sorious Samura struggled to
find the words that would fit the moment.
He hadn't expected to win the prestigious prize and so hadn't prepared a speech.
Looking out across
audience, the pioneering video journalist made the snap decision to
speak his mind rather than proffer faux gratification.
"I stood there and
thought of my people," he recalls, before asking, "Where were you when
my people were killing, raping and maiming themselves?"
"You are tripping over
cables in Kosovo, why didn't you come and cover our war and now you are
clapping for me. You can have your award."
I was just hell-bent on actually using my own weapon, which was the camera, to call for help
Sorious Samura
Sorious Samura
In a decorated film career that has also brought Peabody and Emmy awards, Samura has rarely submitted his professional or personal style to convention.
This strident
nonconformity has made him a compelling storyteller -- a fact perhaps
best emphasized by the on and off camera tactics he employed to make
"Cry Freetown," his debut film about the brutal civil war that tore
apart his native Sierra Leone.
Filmmaker Sorious Samura on the road
When the notoriously
violent forces of the Revolutionary United Front marched on Freetown,
the country's capital in 1999, Samura, unlike many of his colleagues and
compatriots, refused to flee the city.
Instead he waited for the rebel army, gained their trust and embedded himself with their rank and file soldiers.
His plan was to document
the violence, torture, rape and use of child soldiers by the RUF and
their government backed opponents which came to define the conflict.
Samura hoped his film would make it out of Sierra Leone and force the international community to intervene to end the war.
"I was just hell-bent on
actually using my own weapon, which was the camera, to call for help
because we were just left by ourselves to die. Nothing was going to stop
me," he says.
"For me there was just
no choice. I had to go out and film and hopefully stay alive and get the
world to see what is happening in my country."
To the untrained eye
such tactics may seem reckless. For Samura however, experiencing his
subject matter is an essential part of the storytelling process.
He has assiduously applied this concept to all of his documentary film work.
More recent efforts have
focused on the topics of hunger in Ethiopia, aids patients in Zambia
and the plight of refugees in Sudan.
In each project Samura
has immersed himself in the lives of his protagonists in an attempt to
comprehend the challenges of their everyday existence.
If I really need to tell these people's stories, if I am the driver
who will articulate their suffering, then I have to experience it
Sorious Samura
Sorious Samura
When he filmed a displaced Sudanese family in his 2004 film, "Living with Refugees,"
Samura only permitted himself to eat when they ate and drink from the
same sources, mostly dried-up rivers, as he followed them across
dangerous terrain from Darfur to Chad.
"To understand a man's problem you have got to walk at least a mile in his shoes," Samura says.
"If I really need to
tell these people's stories, if I am the driver who will articulate
their suffering, then I have to experience it."
"It is sometimes easy
for people to say, I understand what you are going through, I can
imagine...that is not true. Sometimes you can only live it to believe,
to understand."
But by repeatedly
drawing attention to such traumatic and challenging subject matter, some
critics have accused Samura of focusing only on the negative in Africa.
The filmmaker who
himself had to scavenge for food in his Freetown youth rejects this
viewpoint out of hand. He says you have to tell these stories no matter
how uncomfortable it may make some people feel.
"There are things that I
believe that I can say that ought to be said about Africa....even if
they are harsh realities but they ought to be said."
"African stories are
like onions," he says. "You have got to take time to peel those layers
and of course, like onions ... it's going to burn your eyes. You will
get a story that is not just about objectivity...it is the whole
picture."
While Samura is keen to
recognize that there have been many positive developments on the
continent, he also highlights the importance of Africans reporting their
own stories and creating their own narrative, no matter how difficult.
He believes this will
lend more authenticity to the chronicling of life in modern Africa than
foreign journalists coming in with their own ready-made preconceptions.
"Only Africans can tell
their stories from the bottom up, from the African perspective, like a
prism so that people will be able to see."
If a new generation of
African journalists can be inspired to take ownership of their own story
with honesty and conviction, Samura believes the risks he has taken to
make his films will have paid off.
"One thing that would
make me believe I have achieved something for real in this particular
discipline, is to see African journalists worship ... on the altar of
truth," he says.
"African journalists
should realize that they owe no obligations to tribe, to party, or to
wealthy businessmen or to political leaders. All their responsibility is
the truth."
"We have to find that pride in ourselves. I would rather die a poor man than trade what I have right now... my integrity."
Eoghan Macguire contributed to this report
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