About the Darfur Diaries project
After decades of oppression, marginalization and increasing violence at the hands of the Sudanese government, the Sudanese Liberation Army in Darfur (the western region of Sudan) took up arms in 2003. The government and allied militias, known as Janjaweed, answered the rebellion with large-scale murder of civilians, mass rapes of women and girls, and destruction of villages—resulting in one of the world’s largest current political and humanitarian crises.
Aisha Bain was the Deputy Director at the Center for the Prevention of Genocide in Washington, DC in the winter of 2003. There had been alarming reports about thousands of refugees streaming across the border from Sudan into eastern Chad, yet very little was known about what was going on or why. She began a massive research campaign, making contacts in Darfur to discover that villages were being attacked and burned to the ground. Alarming information continued to flow in – there were mass rapes of women, large scale murder of civilians, and reports of bombing and torture. Civilians from certain tribes in Darfur seemed to be targeted by members of other tribes. Some said these militias were backed by the government of Sudan and the Sudanese military. She continued her intensive research campaign to try to determine reportable facts – names, numbers, places, dates, and confirmable stories. Aisha began calling news agencies to alert them to this critical news story. If media outlets weren’t covering this, it must be because they didn’t know what was going on, she thought. Again and again, she was told that it wasn’t important enough to cover. Aisha shared her mounting frustration with Adam Shapiro, a fellow graduate student and activist, who had recently returned from an independent documentary film project in Iraq.
“Let’s cover the story ourselves,” Adam suggested. “If the media isn’t going to do it, we will. We can raise the money, buy the equipment…and go.”
“Man, you can’t get in,” Aisha said, “It’s a total mess in there, all the borders are closed…” She shook her head, trying to imagine how this could work.
Adam had some experience getting in and out of difficult places. “There’s always a way,” he said calmly. Aisha looked at him, and then smiled. “Let’s do it,” she said.
Jen Marlowe had lunch with Adam in May as he and Aisha were trying to raise funds and make plans. He told her about the project. Until then, she hadn’t even heard of Darfur. She was appalled; both because of the atrocities he described and that she hadn’t known about this travesty. She asked Adam if he and Aisha needed help. But their fundraising efforts were slow; too many other people had not heard of Darfur. Two weeks before leaving, with funding finally secured, Adam invited her to join the team. The plan was to document via film what no one else was covering: the conditions of the refugees in Chad and the displaced people in Darfur and the atrocities they had survived – not as statistics, but as the experiences and lives of people with a history and culture undergoing a great catastrophe.
In mid October 2004, Aisha, Adam and Jen traveled to the refugee camps in eastern Chad and the Zaghawa tribal region of northern Darfur. They snuck across the porous border between Chad and Sudan and remained behind rebel lines. They met refugees living in camps in the harshest of conditions, who built their own schools to educate their children although they had no resources whatsoever. They walked through the charred and broken remains of destroyed villages, trying to imagine the vibrant life that once was there. They were welcomed hospitably by displaced people as they tried to find a way to survive in Darfur. They spoke to leaders of the rebel movement resisting the Sudanese government. They conducted interviews with dozens of men, women and children whose strength and resilience in the face of horror was inspiring. They left Darfur and eastern Chad after almost a month with over 45 hours of footage and incredible stories, images and testimonies.
The film “Darfur Diaries: Message from Home” was completed in November of 2005 and is currently screening widely at festivals, university campuses and human rights groups worldwide.
If you are interested in organizing a screening of the film, please get in touch with us through this website.
If you are interested in organizing a screening of the film with the filmmakers present to speak and answer questions, please contact CreativeWell, Inc at info@creativewell.com, or call: 1-800-743-9182.
There is now a companion book, called “Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival“, released by Nation Books in October, 2006. If you are interested in more information about the book, please contact us or click here.
The Darfur Diaries team has also started an education initiative to reestablish schools in the destroyed villages where they filmed and are currently supporting schools in four villages. For more information on this initiative, please contact us at info@darfurdiaries.org, or click here.
