Kidd's Freetown film traces daunting issues faced by Sierra Leonean youths
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Updated: July 03, 2009 1:59 PM
Reporter Arwen Kidd is no ambulance chaser.
The valley-reared filmmaker pursues human-interest stories — often ignored by major media — while working and teaching journalism in Africa’s poorest, and often dangerous, nations.
Kidd’s penetrating documentary about Sierra Leonean youths, called Freetown: Coming Of Age, was one of seven finalists in Victoria’s Human Rights DocFest 2009.
On a break in Cowichan before returning to work in Liberia, Kidd, 23, told how she and co-producer Oliver Smith shot Freetown in late summer 2007 during the war-torn country’s elections.
“I decided to do the film about its youths because Sierra Leone’s government defines youths as being 15 to 35 years old: its entire country is youths.”
That demographic springs from carnage caused by rebel thugs, disease, and starvation in the former slave-shipping region.
“0ur entire film is the story of youths in their own words so it’s not narrated.”
The tropical country’s residents speak English, English dialect Krio, and tribal tongues.
“I probably interviewed 50 people and there’s about a dozen in the film.
“I picked those with the most character and those who spoke the best so western audiences can relate to them.”
A street kid and former rebel named Handbrake punctuates her 45-minute movie.
His experiences reflect horror inflicted on dirt-poor citizens by Sierra Leone’s RUF rebels.
“They had common practices of mass murder and chopping off limbs,” said the graduate of Shawnigan Lake and Queen Margaret’s schools.
The UN ranks Sierra Leone lowest on the Human Development Index, and seventh lowest on the Human Poverty Index as its folks suffer government corruption and suppression of the press.
Kidd said preventable diseases are common too, twinned by widespread sanitation issues and few hospitals.
“Many people are treated by local witch doctors.
“Many people won’t even know they have HIV-AIDS.”
Still, many Sierra Leoneans shared their brave stories with the two white reporters.
“Street boys talked about their daily lives and abuse from local police,” said Kidd, who edited Freetown in Romania.
“Police come in the middle of the night and beat them up and kick them out of places where they’re squatting.
“They say, ‘Give us money or we’ll arrest you.’ They steal to give money to the police.
“Another guy was shot by a policeman when I was there because he had no proper licence plate for his taxi and didn’t stop when asked to.”
Rapper artists were also writing lyrics about social issues such as teenage pregnancy.
“Unemployment was another big one, and having some training but being unable to find a job.”
Big stories out of Africa are often of war and famine so westerners don’t get human-interest sides of daily life in poor countries, said the journalism grad from Nova Scotia’s University of King’s College.
She now works for Journalists for Human Rights, training African reporters through workshops and on-the-job training. Kidd has also worked in The Gambia, Ghana and Cameroon.
“In Freetown, I wanted to create understanding by showing a different side of a country (westerners) don’t otherwise get a chance to see.”
Kidd returned to Sierra Leone in late 2007 to shoot another film called A Nation In Healing for the Nova Scotia Sierra Leone Program.
Visit http://www.hrdocfest.com/films.htm for more on Freetown.
Contact Kidd at ageworks.sl@gmail.com.
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