Liberia
Women at the Forefront began with Liberia: Women and War, Roshini’s first documentary that looks at women who are overcoming the consequences of war in their ravaged homelands. Africa’s first republic and counted at one time among its most progressive states, Liberia recently made history again by electing the continent’s first female head of state. Yet President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf inherited a country without basic infrastructure and still reeling from more than a decade of deadly political unrest and civil war.
While filming and conducting research in and outside Monrovia, Roshini learned about the crucial role that women have played in Liberia’s development, overcoming war, disease, and devastating poverty to do so. During the war, Liberian women protested the ongoing violence by starting a peace movement; when it ended, they worked at the grassroots level to bring about political change through Sirleaf’s election. Sirleaf was sworn into office in January 2006, and it was at that pivotal moment in Liberia’s history that Roshini interviewed women of all backgrounds to learn their stories and document how a nation emerging from brutal civil war came to be the first on the continent to elect a woman to its highest office.
Among those she interviewed for Liberia: Women and War were Asatu Bah Kenneth, Liberia’s first female assistant police commissioner, and Dr. Catherine Cooper, who remained in her country throughout the war and treats children suffering from life-threatening diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Related Links
National Geographic: Liberia Country Profile