Santa Fe Film Festival 2008

After nearly two decades of civil war, Liberia is a nation ready for change. On January 16

2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated President. She is the first ever freely elected female head of state in Africa. Winning a hotly contested election with the overwhelming support of women across Liberia, since taking office she has appointed other extraordinary women to leadership positions in all areas of government. Can the first female Liberian president bring sustainable democracy and peace to such a devastated country? With the exclusive access, African director Siatta Scott Johnson and American director Daniel Junge follow President Sirleaf and her closest aides behind the scenes during their first year inoffice.

Biography
Daniel Junge was named by Filmmaker magazine as one of 25 up-and-coming filmmakers in 2003. Junge had his feature-length directorial debut with CHIEFS, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary, and subsequently received national airing on PBS. He also won four regional Emmy’s for COMMON GOOD (2005), a six-part series on social entrepreneurs.

Co-Director Siatta Scott-Johnson was born in Buchanan, Liberia, 1974, and raised in rural Grand Bassa County. She has five years of experience as a reporter and producer at DCTV, one of Liberia’s few broadcast television stations, and is a founding member of Omuahtee Africa Media.
2008 AFI DALLAS International Film Festival, Target Documentary Award

AFI Project: 20/20 is an American Film Institute (AFI) international initiative designed to enhance cultural exchange, understanding and collaboration through filmmakers and their films from the US and abroad. It is an unprecedented cultural diplomacy effort that is the only international filmmaker exchange supported by all of America’s cultural agencies—National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Participation in AFI Project: 20/20 is by invitation based on an artist’s filmmaking excellence and their potential for positively interrelating with film professionals, filmmaking peers, cultural officials and audiences, particularly in foreign countries. AFI FEST—the debut festival for the program—and the other venues and countries participating in AFI Project: 20/20 provide an arena for American and International cultural voices to be heard and seen, creating learning opportunities for audiences and artists alike. Through workshops, seminars and appearances at film festivals, cultural centers, museums and other community, educational and cultural venues in the US and abroad, AFI Project: 20/20 filmmakers will promote mutual understanding, while nurturing filmmaking excellence.

Now in its third year, the program continues to support and advocate the use of film in cultural diplomacy. Representing various countries, AFI Project: 20/20’s multicultural roster of films challenges its audiences to examine, reflect and celebrate diversity. In 2008-2009, 13 filmmakers from 8 countries and their films are planning to visit China, Peru, South Africa, France and Great Britain, as well as St. Louis, Santa Fe, Washington, D.C, Honolulu, Dallas and Waterville, Maine.