Local Liberians make a movie on Ebola for homeland

Working without surgical gloves, a nurse contracts Ebola. Her distraught husband wants to comfort her but she runs screaming - "Don't touch me!" - across their yard. "What have I done to deserve this?" she wails.

Wanting a hands-on ritual burial for a nephew who died, a village elder steals back the body from townsmen preparing to bury it safely.

A pastor unschooled in Ebola throws an arm around a tear-streaked parishioner and says she'll be OK. "Do you believe in Ebola or in Jesus Christ?" he says. "No disease is bigger than God."

The images are searing. But this is not West Africa.

This is Darby Borough, Sharon Hill, the Refuge Baptist Church in Southwest Philadelphia, and a jungle-like grove near 84th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard.

Weeks before Ebola shot to the top of international news reports, some West African immigrants in Philadelphia were busy building a bridge to their countrymen. Their vehicle: a 60-minute educational DVD destined for free mass distribution across Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, the three nations most severely affected by the epidemic.

Titled The Ebola Awareness Movie, it blends scripted dramatizations, news clips of heads of state, green-screen technology to simulate scenes in Monrovia, and narrative appeals in a half-dozen African languages about how to take proper precautions.

The movie feels homemade. It is a co-production of local Liberians, several of whom lost relatives to Ebola this year.

Their plan: to mass-produce the DVDs, take them to West Africa, and distribute them widely in a public-education campaign. They want to raise enough money to make 250,000 copies, and provide DVD players and generators in areas that lack reliable electricity.

"Our goal is to bring awareness," said director Harris Murphy, 42.

The film was shot in September with a Panasonic 100B camcorder, modestly compensated actors, and a budget of $18,000. Their company, Kings Pictures Movies Production, was founded in 2005 and has made four films about African immigrants in America. One is Once Upon a Lie; two others are Traditional Burden, Parts 1 and 2.

Murphy knows that going to West Africa can be risky.

"It's dangerous right now," he said. "But if we don't step up, who will? . . . We have to do something for our people. We can't wait for all of them to die. We have to step in to provide some of the information these people need to save their lives."

Murphy said one of his aunts in Liberia and her four grown children died from Ebola in September.

Voffee Jabateh, executive director of the African Cultural Alliance of North America (ACANA), which helped fund the Ebola film, said he lost a stepmother and all of her grandchildren to the disease.

He said it was important for people in Liberia to get accurate information from Liberians abroad.

"They've got to hear from us that the government did not create Ebola," said Jabateh, "and stop the denial."

Jallah Kanneh, 49, is the film's cinematographer and editor. His brother Sekou, 61, who runs Sekuma, a Southwest Philadelphia import-export business, opened the company's stockyard for use in some of the film's scenes.

The brothers were born in Barkiedu, a hamlet in Lofa County. Their birthplace, with an estimated population of 1,500, has lost 126 people to Ebola, they said.

The film also addresses people in West Africa who might travel to the United States.

"Our brothers and sisters coming from Liberia, we expect them to be honest . . . or the entire community will be stigmatized," said Wilmot Kunney, chairman of the board of the Union of Liberian Associations in America.

The Ebola Awareness Movie premieres Saturday at 6 p.m. at ACANA's 200-capacity banquet hall, 5524 Chester Ave. Tickets are $20, with proceeds going to the public education campaign, organizers said.

Earlier Saturday, the filmmakers plan to lead a march to raise awareness about Ebola, and solicit donations. The march, which Murphy expects to draw at least 2,000 people, starts at 70th Street and Woodland Avenue at 8:30 a.m. and ends in a park at 48th Street and Chester Avenue.