Stars in Movie Shown at Port Jeff Doc Series Recognized with Nobel Peace Prize

This year on Oct. 7, the Nobel Peace Prize "was awarded to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work."

The Port Jefferson Documentary Series showed the documentary Pray the Devil Back To Hell in 2009, which documented the story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and countless other woman. A documentary is not only a story from a while ago but, potentialy, a harbinger of things to come, a step in the full story. Pray the Devil Back to Hell is scheduled to be shown on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 10 p.m. on PBS.

I had the opportunity to have an email chat with Lyn Boland, co-director of the Port Jefferson Documentary Series where we discussed the series.

"It seems a cliche to say that the amazing thing about documentaries is that they are real," said Lyn. "The feature-length films we show in the documentary series often have a story line, an 'arc,' that evokes audience involvement and emotion equal to any theatrical screening. But these films are not fiction and that fact is clearly brought home when one of the characters steps out of the film and is actually present for a Q&A after the film, like the mom in I Love You Mommy, or when it becomes clear that the story on the screen is continuing after we leave the theater. Give Up Tomorrow, for example, was a very dramatic film but it was equally dramatic for me to see the audience line up after the film to help the young man who's story was told, to try to change the ending by participating in the problem."

"The second program that I photographed, in September 2005, for the Port Jefferson Documentary Series was  the Power of Good," I said. "The story, about Nicolas Winter, was a 'reconstruction of the events of 1939 which led to the rescue of 669 children.'

"The guest speaker that night was the films producer accompanied by one of the children, a woman then living in Smithtown. Her recounting of her experience made the program very personal. Later on in the evening a woman in the audience, visiting from Texas, identified herself as one of the children. Her name was in the logs, copies of which were on hand, kept by Nicolas Winter, the man responsible for the rescue. The story in the movie was great but the audience interaction made it very special. It is easy for me to look at this, the excitement of the discussion, as the reason I have been motivated to photograph documentary events for the series. I have tried to capture this excitement during the years that I have been photographing for the Port Jefferson Documentary Series."

"Even more dramatic is the story behind a film we showed two years ago, Pray the Devil Back to Hell," said Lyn. "Pray was a powerful documentary about the women who brought peace to Liberia, a country torn apart by armies consisting of their husbands, brothers and fathers. The film ends with one of the women becoming president, a triumph. But the story doesn't stop there. The female activists who brought about this change were recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The real life in the film went on, reminding us that these films bring us the real, continuing drama of life."

"My take is that these documentaries are not the end of story and we, in the theatre audience, have the opportunity to not only observe, but perhaps be part of the story," I said. "A favorite photographer of mine, Alfred Eisenstaedt once said, 'It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.' It is exciting to be able to  click with the documentary."

Thanks Lyn.