A War Story from the Cutting Room

As I've been wrapping up my career at Frontline I've been reviewing some of the major work I did there over the last 25 years .  Thursday night at a  lovely event Frontline threw in my honor, I told the story about one of those films that I thought I'd also share here.

The film was a two hour epic on the Rwanda genocide called Ghosts of Rwanda. Working with producer/director Greg Barker and his very talented editor, Paul Carlin, we spent two weeks in a London edit room fine-cutting the film. 

The first third of the film, about the run-up to the start of the genocide . was working great, crackling with tension and a sense of impending sense of doom. then when the killing started to take place in early April 1994, the film suddenly fell flat, drained of its tension. 

I knew from my work on the two previousRwanda films with the BBC, that the solution lay in bringing a new tension into the film with the story of how the west refused to help the Rwandans as the slaughter continued. 

Greg Barker had been reluctant to use the BBC material, as it had been shot quite differently  than Greg's footage.  But patiently we found ways to integrate that older footage into Greg's narrative, and magically, the back half of the film came to life. 

Until, that is , we arrived at the climactic scene in which BBC correspondent Fergal Keane discovers the horrors of the church in Narabuyhe, littered with hundreds  of decomposing bodies. But the scene, which we had lifted from another film, with Fergal's original narration, just sat there ---- it did not deliver the big emotional  punch the film needed at this point. So I turned to Greg and said, "we have to interview Fergal” . But Fergal it turned out  was in South Africa! And so we waited two whole days for his return as he clock ticked down to our deadline. 

When Fergal did finally arrive, he gave a powerful interview, expiating his own sense of guilt for not having dome more to help the Rwandans and telling us the story of finding 13-year-old Valentina, an emaciated and scarred survivor of the massacre whose fingers of been chopped off by Hutu machetes.

So on the very last day of cutting, we edited Fergal's new interview into the film and magically, once again, the big climactic sequence sprang back to life.

You can see that sequence here starting at 8:54 into this Youtube clip.

All in all, it was a spectacular creative process to which we all contributed,  and which I will always treasure.  It was  the culmination of everything I'd learned about filmmaking at Frontline.

'Greg's Ghosts of Rwanda would go on to win a bushel of awards, including a duPont-Columbia,  a Banff Television,  a Sidney Hillman and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award.

Unfortunately , due to a contract dispute with our co-producing partners , the BBC , Frontline is unable to stream the entire 2-hour film, but there are several excerpts from the film , totaling about 40 minutes on the Frontline website, which will give you a sense of its  craft and power  . 

Here's the link: 

Ghosts of Rwanda excerpts  

You can also stream a complete version of the film by piecing together a series of 8 (I-VIII) Youtube clips, with the heading : "Rwanda genocide documentary".  Here's a link to part I of the youtube series.  

Or if you prefer a more comfortable screening of the film,  it's available on DVD at  Shop PBS. Ghosts of Rwanda DVD

If you haven't ever seen this film, I highly commend it to  you.  It's one of the most powerful docs I've ever seen.