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Directed by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern
Directors
of photography - Jerry Risius, Phil Cox, Tim
Hetherington, William Rexer II, Anne Sundberg
and John Keith Wasson
Editor -
Joey Grossfield
Music -
Paul Brill
Producer - Anne
Sundberg,
Ricki Stern, Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells, Ira Lechner, and
Eileen Haag and Cristina Ljungberg
International Film Circuit. 85 minutes.
This film is not rated.
We’ve seen a lot of American heroes saunter across
the big screen with their shotguns in hand. But if you want to be truly
inspired by a real-world hero whose camera is more powerful than any
firearm, watch The Devil Came On Horseback.
And then join the struggle, because this clash of
good versus evil is still going on, even as you read this.
Accustomed to carrying weapons, former U.S. Marine
Captain Brian Steidle felt rather useless, pointing and shooting with
his camera while shocking violence played out before his eyes. Steidle
patrolled the African country of Sudan in 2006, and he captured
essential evidence about what is happening there. It’s genocide, carried
out in broad daylight, against men, women, and children, while the world
does nothing to stop it.
What Steidle witnessed
there — no human being should have to see such horrors. And yet, Steidle
is on a mission to wake up the world’s conscience. He wants to startle
us into action. So he fills this movie with images that will be hard for
you to forget.
We watch as African natives are slaughtered by the
Janjaweed barbarians. And we cringe as he learns how the Arab-dominated
Sudanese government is funding and supporting these killers. Most of us
know that the U.S. has declared the atrocities against the Africans as
fitting the textbook definition of genocide. But Steidle makes it clear
that this situation will not be resolved by declarations, or protests…
or documentaries for that matter.
Exposing evidence no one else could seize, he hopes
his vivid photographs will inspire us to rise up and demand action. He
wants our government, and others, to reach out and stop this holocaust
before it is too late.
His experiences are hard to believe. He shows us the
pictures of unbelievable carnage, the aerial views of the villages as
they are being looted and burned, and zoom-lens shots of the butchers
moving on in their trucks. We are making eye contact with the killers.
The truck is bristling with rifles like spines on a porcupine.
For some, the film will seem to focus too much on
Steidle's personal experience. Director Rickie Stern explained to the
audience at the City of the Angels Film Festival that Steidle had to be
persuaded to become a focus. Stern believed, and rightly so, that the
story would be more immediate and affecting if we got to know Steidle.
If we travel with him into the territory, and
participate in his dawning realization of what was happening, we will
share in his intensifying zeal to get involved and to change things. The images take their toll.
After the screening, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. It's hard
to know what to do with a surge of desire to make things right. Send
money? Write letters? The answer is... yes.
But the answer has to be more than that. It
must involve prayer. It must involve
educating family, friends, and especially children... so they know how
to make a difference over the long term. As Frederic Buechner has
written, "If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we
must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that
is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life
behind and within their faces.” Steidle takes us into the experience of
the Sudanese people. It is a terrible place to be. But Christ dwells in
places like this, and to serve him we must follow him. |
