and i've been involved in the documentary filmmaking business all over the world for the last ten years during the process of making these films i found myself taking photographs often much to the annoyance of the video cameramen
i found this photography of mine almost compulsive and at the end of a shoot i would sometimes feel that i had photographs that told a better story than a sometimes sensational documentary
i felt when i had my photographs that i was holding on to something true regardless of agendas or politics in two thousand and seven i traveled to three war zones i traveled to iraq afghanistan and
and over there i experienced other people 's suffering up close and personal immersed myself in some rather intense and emotional stories and at times i experienced great fear for my own life
i won 't go into details about what led to a decision i made but let 's just say it involved alcohol cigarettes other substances and a woman
i basically decided that it was i not the camera or the network or anything that lay outside myself that was the only instrument in storytelling truly worth tuning
in my life when i tried to achieve things like success or recognition they eluded me paradoxically when i let go of these objectives and worked from a place of compassion and purpose
looking for excellence rather than the results of it everything arrived on its own including fulfillment
i invite you into three recent stories of mine which are about this way of looking if you will which i believe exemplify the tenets of what i like to call compassion in storytelling
in two thousand and seven i went to liberia where a group of my friends and i did an independent self funded film still in progress
a very legendary and brutal war lord named general butt naked his real name is joshua and he 's pictured here in a cell where he once used to torture and murder people including children
joshua claims to have personally killed more than ten thousand people during liberia 's civil war he got his name from fighting stark naked
and he is probably the most prolific mass murderer alive on earth today this woman witnessed the general murdering her brother
how do you live with yourself if you know you've committed horrific crimes today
the general is a baptized christian evangelist and he 's on a mission we accompanied joshua as he walked the
visiting villages where he had once killed and raped he seeked forgiveness and he
during this expedition i expected him to be killed outright and us as well but what i saw opened my eyes to an idea of forgiveness which i never thought possible
in the midst of incrediblepoverty and loss people who had nothing absolved a man who had taken everything from them
he begs for forgiveness and receives it from the same woman whose brother he murdered senegalese the young man seated on the
was once a child soldier under the general 's command until he disobeyed orders and the general shot off both his legs
the general in this image he risked his life as he walked up to people whose families he'd murdered
this image to me is almost like from a shakespearean play with a man surrounded by various influences desperate to hold on to something true within himself in a context of great suffering that he has created himself
and speaks about them from soapboxes across monrovia to an audience that often includes his victims a very unlikely spokesperson for the idea of separation of church and state
the second story i'm going to tell you about is about a group of very special fighting women with rather unique peace keeping skills
liberia is now home to an all woman united nations contingent of indian peacekeepers these women many from small towns in india help keep the peace far away from home and family
use negotiation and tolerance more often than an armed response
that a woman could gauge a potentially violent situation much better than men and that they were definitelycapable of diffusing it non aggressively
contingent seems to be quite lucky and it has not sustained any casualties even though dozens of peacekeepers have been killed in liberia and yes all of those people killed
many of the women are married with children and they say the hardest part of their deployment was being kept away from their children i accompanied these women on their patrols and watched as they walked past men many who passed very lewd comments incessantly
and when i asked one of the women about the shock and awe response she said don 't worry same thing back home we know how to deal with these fellows and ignored
in a country ravaged by violence against women indian peacekeepers have inspired many local women to join the police force
answer more than five thousand calls in just two months and all this against incredible logistical odds like heat and traffic jams
as we neared angry crowds attacked our trucks and stoned them by hundreds of people all over the place these men were terrified as the mob attacked
but nonetheless despite the hostility firefighters left the vehicle and successfully fought the fire running the gauntlet through hostile crowds and some wearing motorbike helmets to prevent injury
some of the local people forcibly took away the hoses from the firemen to put out the fire in their homes now hundreds of homes were destroyed
but the question that lingered in my mind was what causes people to destroy fire trucks
headed to their own homes where does such rage come from and how are we responsible for this
lack even the most basic amenities and this is something that is common to all our big cities back to the dfs a huge chemical depot caught fire
thousands of drums filled with petrochemicals were blazing away and exploding all around us the heat was so intense that hoses were used to cool down firefighters fighting extremely close to the fire
and with no protective clothing in india we often love to complain about our government bodies but over here the heads of the dfs
c sharman mister a k sharman lead the firefight with their men something wonderful in a country where manual labor is often looked down upon
over the years my faith in the power of storytelling has been tested and i've had very serious doubt about its efficacy and my own faith in humanity
however a film we shot still airs on the national geographic channel and when it airs i get calls from all the guys i was with and they tell me that they receive hundreds of calls congratulating them
some of the firemen told me that they were also inspired to do better because they were so pleased to get thank yous rather than brick bats
it seems that this story helped change perceptions about the dfs at least in the minds of an audience in part on televisions read magazines and whose huts aren't
in the audience and also in the storyteller and that's the power of storytelling focus on what's dignifiedcourageous and beautiful and it grows thank you
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