SUNDANCE AWARD WINNER THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO, DEBUTING APRIL 8 ON HBO, DOCUMENTS THE ONGOING PLIGHT OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THE DEADLIEST CONFLICT SINCE WORLD WAR II
——–
Director Lisa F. Jackson To Testify Before The United States Senate’s
Subcommittee Hearing On Human Rights And The Law April 1
——–
Today, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, a crime against humanity is taking place on an unimaginable scale – hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped in the last ten years. Often carried out with impunity by gangs of armed militia, these atrocities leave survivors traumatized, shunned by society and family, and suffering lifelong health effects such as HIV. Their trials unacknowledged, the victims are shamed and invisible. As a result, the world is largely ignorant of their horrific plight and the political conditions that make it possible.
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO follows director Lisa F. Jackson’s crusade to expose this shocking reality when it debuts TUESDAY, APRIL 8 (10:00-11:15 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. On April 1, one week before the film’s debut, Jackson will testify before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee Hearing on Human Rights and the Law.
Other HBO playdates: April 10 (1:25 a.m.), 14 (10:30 p.m.), 22 (12:30 a.m.) and 28 (2:10 a.m.)
HBO2 playdate: April 9 (8:00 p.m.)
THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO documents her journeys to the war zones of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to find survivors who will break that silence by bearing witness to their experiences. Forging a first-hand connection with the people she meets, Jackson interviews victims young and old, self-confessed rapists, activists, U.N. Peacekeepers and woefully underfunded local law enforcement officials. Jackson traveled alone and performed all production functions (producer, director, photography, sound) herself.
The project is both political and profoundly personal for Jackson, who was herself gang-raped at age 25 in Washington, D.C. by three men, who were never found. When she shares her experience with the women she interviews, she is asked, “Was there a war in your country?”
Among the women who offer wrenching testimony in THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO is Marie Jeanne, a 34-year-old mother of eight who was attacked in her home by five soldiers while she was ill and five months’ pregnant. “I was unable to escape, to save myself,” she recounts, close to tears, adding that her husband not only abandoned her after the assault, but also told their children that she wanted to be raped. Another woman who survived three years as a sex slave describes her nightmare in blunt language, saying, “When we were living in the forest it wasn’t just one man. Every soldier can have sex with you. We got pregnant there. We gave birth in the forest, alone, like animals, without food or medicine.”
Jackson visits Panzi, an understaffed hospital in Bukavu that specializes in treating the hundreds of victims of sexual violence who flock there. Most patients suffer from fistula, an agonizing condition that results when rapists use guns or sticks to mutilate their victims’ genitalia. Dr. Denis Mukwege, the hospital’s medical director, asks, “Why is this happening? Why use sex in order to humiliate and defeat someone? To threaten someone so they flee their village? Why use sex? This is the monstrosity of this century.”
Jackson also spends time with Major Honorine Munyole of the National Police. Working out of a wooden shack, Major Munyole is a one-woman special victims unit in charge of investigating sex crimes in the eastern DRC. The frustrations of her job are apparent, especially in a country where rape prosecutions are rare. She sees the sex crimes against the women of the Congo as a breakdown in society, saying, “And so, what is a woman? The woman is the mother of a nation. He who rapes a woman, rapes an entire nation. When a woman is exposed to that kind of violence, it’s the entire country that is affected by it.”
Most chilling are the interviews that take place deep in the jungle – at obvious personal peril to Jackson and her translator – with members of the Congolese army, who unabashedly admit raping many women. “Usually they don’t want to do it,” says one soldier of his victims. “But if anyone resists, I use my gun to get what I want and most of the time they accept.”
Bernard Kalume, a Congolese man who works with the UN peacekeepers as a translator and liaison, travels with Jackson. Kalume watched as men murdered his first wife, a Tutsi, during the Rwandan conflict of 1994. He fled to his native Congo, where he is now confronted daily by the horrific tales of abuse. The emotions he feels for these women is at times overwhelming, especially when he talks about his daughters living in a society where rapists walk free. “If a society cannot protect women and kids, what kind of society is that?” asks Kalume. “If men themselves start to torture, to kill, to kidnap, to rape women and teenagers, how can you say this is normal, a society of human beings? It becomes just a real jungle – that is what we are living in – it’s a real jungle.”
With THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO, Jackson challenges audiences to consider what dark forces are at work in a world that has allowed more than 250,000 women and girls to suffer such atrocities without offering them either solace or justice. Economic greed seems to be one factor: Criminal groups appear to be fanning the flames of civil war in order to perpetuate chaos and instability in the region while they plunder eastern Congo’s natural riches of diamonds, gold and coltan, a metal used in cell phones and laptops, for personal profit.
As many in the film attest, systematic rape is an effective way of destroying the very foundations of a society. But why are those in power – including powerful nations such as the U.S. – not doing more to prevent the rapes?
“Why has the systematic rape and sexual enslavement of tens of thousands of women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo escaped the world’s attention?” Jackson asks. “Is there something about sexual violence that makes us all turn away? In what inhuman context does rape become intentional, programmatic, a weapon of choice? Where are the voices of the women themselves? If they tell their stories, will others listen?”
Lisa F. Jackson has been involved in documentary filmmaking for more than 30 years. Her work has earned numerous accolades, including three Emmy(r) nominations, two Emmy(r) awards and four CINE Golden Eagles. Her previous HBO credits include “Addicted,” “Life Afterlife” and “Why Am I Gay?” She has dozens of PBS credits as director or editor, including: “Voices and Visions: Emily Dickinson,” “Jackson Pollock: Portrait,” “Through Madness” (1993 NYC Emmy(r) winner), “The Creative Spirit,” “Storytellers,” “The Van Cliburn Piano Competition” and “Bill Moyers’ Journal.” Jackson also produced and directed the 2001 Emmy(r) Award nominee “Meeting with a Killer: One Family’s Journey”; the 1999 Emmy(r)-winner “The Secret Life of Barbie”; five episodes in the “Adoption” series, including stories shot in Siberia and Guatemala; and national PSAs for the Office for Victims of Crime. She is currently in production on a documentary about of group of displaced women living in the slums of Bogota, Colombia.
Technorati Tags: The Greatest Silence, Rape in the Congo, HBO, Sundance, Upcoming Debut