A steady hand: Documentary filmmaker on guns

INTERVIEW/Shelley Saywell

There is no issue too daunting, distant or dangerous for the Canadian documentary film maker Shelley Saywell. She has taken her camera and small crew to war zones and areas of conflict for 20 years now, bringing home news about the women, children and men affected by violence in its many forms. Her work took her to Iraq before and after the invasion, she filmed in Bosnia, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, just to name three places. Saywell’s A Child’s Century of War, caught the testimonies of children in Chechnya, and Sierra Leone. Among her topics, women and conflict: the life of Faye Schulman, Jewish holocaust survivor, Kim Phuc, who was struck by a napalm bomb as a girl in the iconographic Vietnam War photograph. Much closer to home, girls in Toronto who chose gangs as a way to find self respect.

Saywell also took to the task of showing how legal guns slip into the illegal market in Devil’s Bargain, a film that begins in a gun market in Somalia and traces the routes of trade that touch France, South Africa, Bosnia, Moldova, the United States and Canada.

In this exclusive interview, Shelley Saywell, who has been awarded an Emmy for Investigative journalism, and UNESCO’s Gandhi Silver Medal for Promoting the Culture of Peace, discusses Devil’s Bargain, and tells us about her life and work as a documentary filmmaker:

What led you to become a documentary filmmaker?

I was interested in journalism, I grew up to some extent outside Canada, my father was a university professor, we lived in Asia, from early age I got interested in how people lived in other areas of the world,  I have always been interested in politics and art, with a strong sense of activism.

Activism, is that something that you share with your generation? Where does it come from?

When I was a young girl the Vietnam War was going on, the Cultural Revolution in China. I was really very anti war, America, Vietnam... I was really aware of it always... When I was 12 we traveled to Afghanistan and Cambodia...My generation was a little bit after the hippie generation that was reinventing so much, I remember wishing I was older, and part of that generation.

How do you choose your topics?

My first film was in 1988, a bit over 20 years of work now. Usually I am struck by something I read in the paper, something that made me angry and upset…This is what inspires me into action.

Lately I have always been telling my friends and family, ‘no more conflicts and war zones...’ that I want to do something light and fun, but these are stories that really matter to me... And one story leads to the next: we made a film on women and war that lead us to see the cost of war on children. From there it was a natural transition to conceive of a documentary on guns. This happens with any films you make in a conflict zone where inevitably all these issues are present, women being raped, the plight of children, society becoming ungovernable.

How do you prepare for the documentaries?

We tend to do a lot of research, before we go anywhere; we contact other journalists, local journalists and experts. By the time we go, we are clear on the elements that we are looking for, and, to be perfectly honest when you don’t have a huge budget we want to make sure we get what we are after.

What led you specifically to take up the topic of guns?

The topic of gun running came out of all the other films in conflict zones, we made two in Iraq, we filmed in Bosnia, Afghanistan, there’s been a lot of films, and of course, the common denominator was small arms.

What struck you most?

In the past, if you were a journalist, the profession guaranteed you a measure of safety. But things changed so much that it got to a point in the Chechen war that if you were a journalist you needed to hire armed guards. In the film we did on children affected by war, we did a whole section filmed in Sierra Leone, and the little boys talking about guns. All this lead to a need to talk about the small arms and light weapons themselves.

In The Devil’s Bargain you focus on how guns leave the legal market…

What I wanted to do is the links between the legal and illicit market, often we’d get the authorities telling us that what we were asking about was not relevant because it was about the illicit market. And what I wanted to do a documentary on was precisely how legal guns made their way to the illegal market. I wanted to explore that connection.

What led you to focus on Somalia?

I spent about a year reading and preparing and I got a bit depressed,
the topic is so big; you could almost film in any country. Reports come out almost every day, from the DRC, Somalia, Colombia, you name it, we could’ve done it in Haiti...
The truth is that we could’ve made it anywhere; we wanted a case study where we could show the effect of this flow of guns and trace that back to the manufacturers,
so we chose Somalia, because there is no place as destabilized by the effect of guns as it is.

How do you finance your film projects?

We raise the money, find the television network that wants the film, make the film, and sell it to a distributor that shows it outside Canada. To get an initial backing, we have ideas and submit them to different TV. people first, and see whether show interest or not... The Devil’s Bargain, for example, was shown and financed by Canadian television.

What repercussions do your films have?

I think about that a lot when we are filming or when we are editing... we don’t want anyone in the film to suffer because they were in the film, we want to protect people from any repercussions. Of course it depends on the film; I have no problem exposing people who are doing something wrong. You have to keep in mind that we leave the countries, and they stay there... we make choices in how much to include and how much to show. To make a good, strong film, you want to expose these things... but you don’t want to generate a backlash.

For example now we are doing a film about teenage girls and some have been very open with us and I feel protective of them. but it is also their story... a local story we are telling.

So it may be someone’s privacy or someone’s life at risk

A "fixer" (a local journalist who acts as a consultant) who worked with us was killed; he was a journalist and had his own radio show. When something like that happens, it is so terrible; even if we will never find out the causes and the circumstances we always ask ourselves if there was any connection with our work. 

How about positive repercussions? 

A film we made about Kim Phuc, the girl in the Vietnam war photograph, who was hurt with napalm, the film was showed in 30 countries around the world, we started the Kim foundation for children affected by war... so that helped. I would like to believe that they contribute to change policy, but it is hard to prove that....

Is it possible to discuss any issue in documentary film?

As to what can be filmed, I think of this with respect to my friends who are writers, who are journalists. If you know something to be true, but you can’t show it, it does not make a good film... If you can’t get a camera to show it, if it is too impossible to get
in terms of censoring. But if you are talking about ideas... then the sky is the limit,
There are films on gay politicians, bicycling in Europe, torture, eroticism among lesbians... There are all kinds of experimental film makers, working with the language itself.

What are you working on currently?

Right now I am working on a documentary on Pilipino nannies abused by their employers; it is set here at home in Canada.

As an activist, how do you relate to the work of academic researchers?

These are different types of work, but are linked. Researchers on small arms are my heroes; I was shocked to hear one of them was recently killed in the field, so they are not really academic, these research studies are fundamentally important on so many levels.

If it were not for researchers doing those reports, you can’t lobby for change, knowledge really is power. Take an activist movement such as Greenpeace for example; it learned that a long time ago. They were out there getting the media and doing spectacular stunts. But they needed to get top scientists to do reports on toxicity to start generating change. How do you fight these things? Corporations and governments don’t want change; you need the facts and the studies...

About your team?

I work with the same crew, and between us we speak about 4 languages, we always work with local journalists, the first thing to do, say I am going to the Gaza strip, we hire a local journalist, we have a jargon for that, a fixer, who will show us where it is safe to go, how to get access, and we have been lucky, in every single country or region we have had great local contributions...That is the key relationship. In the end these relationships grow over time and we become friends and develop relationships to their families. Our production company, Bishari films is small; we are two people, working together over the years.