When San Francisco–based filmmaker Banker White made Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars (2005), a documentary about six musicians who form a band while living in a refugee camp in Guinea, he developed lifelong relationships with many of the documentary’s participants. In particular, White became close with Alhadji Jeffrey Kamara, who goes by the stage name Black Nature. In following the All Stars, seeing the incredible effects of self-expression and learning more about daily life in Sierra Leone, White made the extraordinary decision to try to help others in Freetown by developing a collaborative media project with other Sierra Leoneans. Debuting as a month-long filmmaking workshop, WeOwnTV is a thriving year-round community-based media center that provides technical, artistic and vocational support in Freetown. The project originally spearheaded by White found the perfect Freetown-based advocate in Arthur Pratt, a tireless educator and administrator who runs the collaborative. This program will present a series of the considerable array of styles, such as newscasts, art films and traditional tales now being produced by WeOwnTV in Sierra Leone as we bring Freetown to the Bay.


Total running time 75 min.