Liberia: America’s Stepchild
(90 minutes) Liberia/USA
Director: Nancee Oku Bright
Producers: Nancee Oku Bright and Jean-Phillippe Boucicaut

Description:

This dramatic documentary follows the parallel stories of America's relationship with the African republic of Liberia–founded and backed by the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the U.S. government as a home for freeborn Blacks and former slaves–and the settlers' relationship with the indigenous people. As seen through the eyes of Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright, the film also explores the causes of the turmoil that has ravaged Liberia since 1980.

Biography:

Nancee Oku Bright is a New York-based filmmaker who holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford University. She has made a number of other short ethnographic films on refugees in Sudan and on life in contemporary Liberia. Her book Mothers of Steel: The Life of Eritrean Refugee Women in Sudan will be published by the Red Sea Press. She is currently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), where she works for the United Nations peacekeeping mission as chief of the Humanitarian Affairs Section, on leave from her position in New York as head of the Africa I Section of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She was born in Liberia, West Africa. This is her first documentary film.

Contact Information:

WGBH Boston
125 Western Avenue
Boston, MA 02134
E-mail: alexandra_holden@wgbh.org
URL: www.wgbh.org