Darfur Diaries: An Interview with Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro

Since 2005 dozens of documentaries focusing on the genocide of the African population in the Darfur region of Sudan have been produced and distributed through a myriad of media outlets. Varying wildly in terms of content, production value, and exhibition intent, these movies range from short video pieces intended for the Internet to glossy network productions that have aired on MTV and CBS's 60 Minutes. From the Audio/Visual Club style of a small high school in Danbury, Connecticut, to the corporate fund-raising mode of the Save Darfur Coalition's Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide, countless approaches have been taken to making movies that might have a tangible impact on the dire situation that continues in Darfur.

One film of particular note is Darfur Diaries, which was produced, directed, and edited by activist-filmmakers Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe, and Adam Shapiro. Consisting almost entirely of interviews with displaced Darfurians, Darfur Diaries eschews the documentary conventions of narration, expert interviews, and extensive contextualization through on-screen text. Furthermore, while the movie is certainly made in the activist tradition, at no point do the filmmakers make anything resembling a direct call to action in the body of the movie. Instead, Darfur Diaries relies on the words of those who have experienced the genocide firsthand. While Bain, Marlowe, and Shapiro are not afraid to acknowledge their role as mediators through moments of self-reflexivity, the filmmakers go to great lengths to ensure that a voice is given to the often-silenced victims of Darfur.

Who is hearing this voice? Activists, many of them high school and college students in the United States, have viewed the documentary. David Whiteman would argue, in fact, that a documentary such as Darfur Diaries has the potential to have a large impact on activist efforts, even though direct effects on individual viewers might be difficult to establish. He calls this the "coalition model" of documentary making, and he contends that the very process of producing, distributing, and exhibiting a film can be of significant benefit to an organization by creating "extensive opportunities for interaction among, and impact on, producers, participants, activists, decision makers, and citizens" (Whiteman 54). In this way, the coalition model helps us understand the creation of "alternative spheres of public discourse" that can help a film have "a significant impact in educating and mobilizing activists outside the mainstream" (Whiteman 54).

It would be tempting, based on this observation, to categorize Darfur Diaries as an activist documentary, but to do so would sell the film short. In fact, Darfur Diaries challenges viewers' expectations of activist documentaries, as the filmmakers choose to end the film without a specific call to action. Instead, as they explain below, they prefer to distance themselves from such calls, which they find to be simplistic and often ineffective. Perhaps paradoxically, this lack of a direct call has made it possible to organize a more substantial activist response to the crisis in Darfur than might have been generated by what Marlowe calls "spoon-fed activism." A particularly illustrative example is the story of Suleiman Jamous, a Darfurian humanitarian worker who is featured prominently in the film. Jamous was kidnapped in the summer of 2006. Marlowe was able to turn to an e-mail list that had been compiled at a number of Chicago-area screenings in order to mount a letter-writing campaign to create pressure on various Sudanese and international officials to grant his release. Jamous was subsequently freed on 8 June 2006, and while the letter-writing campaign cannot be given sole credit, there can be little doubt that the emotional portrayal of Jamous in the film created support for his cause among individuals who might never have heard of him otherwise.

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The interviews with Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro were conducted via e-mail and telephone in November 2006. What follows is an edited transcript of those discussions.

VLT: Can you describe the early stages of the film's funding process?

JM: [Codirectors] Aisha [Bain] and Adam [Shapiro] had initially gotten the project fully funded by an alternative...