Chasing the Devil

“I really believe it’s because of Brian Steidle that most people know about Darfur in this country,” says filmmaker Ricki Stern. Indeed, few Americans knew about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in western Sudan until early 2005, when four of Steidle's unsettling photographs documenting atrocities in the region appeared in the New York Times. A former Marine, Steidle had just returned to the United States after spending six grim months observing in Darfur as an unarmed military advisor to the African Union. He’d been utterly unprepared for what he would encounter there—an ethnic conflict that has now killed half a million people and displaced several million more—and was appalled by the lack of response from the international community. When Stern and fellow filmmaker Annie Sundberg met him in a Washington, DC, coffeehouse, Steidle had embarked on an awareness-raising blitzkrieg that had just taken him to Capitol Hill.

The meeting prompted Stern and Sundberg, who had recently completed the activist documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt (TFF ’06), to make the urgent and upsetting The Devil Came on Horseback, which examines the Darfur crisis through Steidle’s eyes. The film looks back at Steidle’s time in Sudan, where a proxy militia known as the Arab Janjaweed (“devils on horseback”) has been carrying out a genocide against the black Africans of Darfur on behalf of the Sudanese government; it also follows Steidle to the crowded refugee camps of Chad, and tracks his often frustrating experiences trying to engage Westerners on the Darfur issue. Since premiering at Sundance and playing at the Tribeca Film Festival, the film has played in theaters and on college campuses, and comes out on DVD next week. The filmmakers, with producers Gretchen Wallace (Steidle’s sister) and Jane Wells, have also found innovative ways to extend the film’s life, including a collaboration with Google Earth and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to use Steidle’s photographs as an educational tool, and a partnership with the Dream for Darfur initiative that seeks to confront China on its culpability in Darfu

Related Links

Devil Came On Horseback

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» The Devil Came on Horseback Official Site
» Dream for Darfur

r at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

On the occasion of the upcoming DVD release of The Devil Came on Horseback (plus a Gotham award nomination!), Sundberg and Stern spoke about the conflict in Darfur, activist filmmaking, and the role of the media in drawing attention to humanitarian crises.

What was the experience of seeing Brian’s images for the first time like for you?

Annie Sundberg: Brian’s photographs were incredibly brutal, and they were filtered through Brian, which made them so much more devastating. He’s very stoic and he has an incredible strength of character, and yet you could tell the devastation he’d experienced.

You didn’t shy away from asserting the connection between the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed, but you didn’t venture into any sort of geopolitical assessment of the conflict—for example, China’s role in the region is mentioned only briefly. Why did you take this approach?

Ricki Stern: For us, the point of the film was to talk about the role and the burden of responsibility that a witness carries. We had a very potent film about a very emotional call of action experienced by one former Marine. So much more has come out since then, but at the time, we really strove to tell the film as Brian was experiencing and understanding the political workings of Sudan.

Sundberg: We had to edit a lot. We did have to get the China part in, but it really became a story about Brian’s personal journey.

Stern: To be honest, Sudan is one of the most complicated crises on the ground right now. It’s a crisis that’s been defined by a grasping for land resources, it’s been exacerbated by the desertification of the Sahara, and it’s been driven in large part by a tightly controlled government in Khartoum… If a viewer’s primary takeaway is that China has an oil infrastructure in Sudan, that leads to a very easy point of action—in fact, we’ve begun asking people who’ve seen the film to start calling the Chinese embassy in the US.

The film alludes several times to Western apathy about engaging with foreign conflicts and humanitarian crises. Do you think there’s something specific about African crises?

Stern: This is a controversial statement, but I actually don’t mind making it: When Kosovo erupted, there was a much faster response by the West. Maybe it was because Yugoslavia was so much closer and intertwined with NATO already. Or was it simply that, on the news, there was a curly-haired white kid that allowed Western audiences to think, “Oh, they’re suffering and they look like mine.” I think that plays a role.

People tend to get involved in Africa where there’s a political will and an economic incentive. China has been very involved in Africa, not just in Sudan, but all over the place. The US is hamstrung to take any sort of intervention role, because we are overextended in Iraq and because Sudan is in essence an Islamic state, and for us to enter in any sort of unilateral way would only increase potential insurgency on the ground and make matters worse. The best thing we can do is try to generate a sense of connected humanitarian concern, so that people in America do care about what happens in Africa. And I think the best way to do that, to be honest, is through film.

How did you observe Brian’s journey yourselves? Did you see his demeanor or attitudes changing over the course of filming?

Stern: We witnessed his personal journey from this reluctant hero, to feeling a sense of guilt for not being able to do more, and then at the end of the film, embracing his role as a witness a bit more, but also feeling burnt out while still hoping that maybe something will change—putting his hopes into the International Criminal Court or the American people, the government even, to really do something, to hear what he’s been trying to tell people for so long.

The film ends on a note of frustration, even futility, but then there’s a final scene of Brian playing with children, as if to say, “You may feel like giving up, but this is why you can’t.” How did the two of you feel upon finishing filming?

Stern: We had mixed feelings, too. I think we were fine with saying it’s not a happy ending. But hopefully, people don’t walk out feeling discouraged. Hopefully they feel encouraged, that they need to participate. That last image of Brian with the kids is really the essence of why it’s important not to give up—why Brian won’t give up.

Sundberg: And there will be more Sudans, unfortunately. The best hope is that we’ll figure out a better way to intervene more effectively and more quickly the next time. But people are feeling very angry and motivated when they come out of the film, and we’re thankful for that.

Do you have relationships with others in the filmmaking community, like the producers of the upcoming Darfur Now documentary, who’ve also sought to raise awareness on Darfur?

Sundberg: Anyone who’s involved with Darfur ultimately gets to know each other pretty well. There’s a lot of good trading of information, a lot of good updates. You’re side by side with each other through the process, and you share notes along the way. Everyone’s goal is to make the best film they can, and not to replicate too much so there’s no redundancy.

I think the more films get out there, the better. Our film is very different from Darfur Now, in a good way. I think it’s a really potent introduction to the crisis, through a very specific witness’ story. One of the really valuable things it has is footage from the worst of the crisis. If you go into Darfur now, it’s not the same kind of slash-and-burn policy as when Brian was there. What’s really great about Darfur Now is that it takes you to stage two—now, thankfully, that the world’s becoming more aware of Darfur, here are even more tangible steps that we, not only as individuals but as institutions, can take to make a real difference.

While the film’s primary subject is Darfur, its secondary subject seems to be the vicissitudes of the modern media cycle. Did you go in expecting that, or realize it was a subsidiary theme along the way?

Sundberg: One of the most telling examples is the British journalist Phil Cox, who was on the ground with a video camera at the same time as Brian [Cox’s footage also appears in the film]. The BBC licensed only a few minutes of his material. He had hours, but they were doing short news stories. What we had was Brian’s personal story, and a context to put that footage in. That’s where I think documentaries can have so much more impact.

What about the release cycle of the film, which is now coming out on DVD? Has there been any frustration there, given the crisis seems likely to continue far into the future?

Stern: It has been hard, given the zeitgeist of Darfur now, given there’s so much more about it in the press—you would think that there would be more interest in putting out these images and allowing people to see this movie. At the grassroots level, we get emails and phone calls all the time from people saying, “How can I see your movie, where can I see it?”

Sundberg: Because we were, in essence, a little boat on a big sea, without a lot of financial support, we were really lucky that we have networked with groups all over the US which are part of the Darfur movement. One, they helped fund the film, but also, they’re helping use the film in ways that are really inspiring. We just produced a list of nontheatrical requests for one of our grantors—from kids calling from a junior high school in St. Louis, Missouri, to a synagogue in Dallas, Texas, to a kid in Mexico who heard about the film, a Marine stationed in Djibouti, someone in South Korea. That’s totally inspiring, and that came not with big marketing money, but because of people believing they can use the film to promote the issue and get people engaged in Darfur. As filmmakers, that feels really, really good.