Pray the Devil Back to Hell--Interview with producer, Abigail Disney

Don't forget about the showing of Pray the Devil, to be held at the Old Main Chapel on the University of Colorado campus, September 21st. Doors open at 5, and the show will start at 7:30.
:) Lizzy

Read the interview below, or listen to Abigail Disney talk about the film at the Radio Without Borders website.

WWTW Interview: ‘Pray the Devil Back to Hell’ producer Abigail Disney
MAY 16, 2009


The women at the heart of “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” craved peace in their native Liberia after too many years of bloodshed.

So they bonded together, setting aside religious differences, to make the country’s raging civil war history.

Their peace effort plays out in “Devil,” a new documentary produced by Abigail Disney and slated for a fall DVD release. It will also be shown during the September Global Peace Tour.

Disney, founder of the nonprofit Daphne Foundation and, yes, the grand-niece of Walt Disney and daughter of Roy E. Disney, checked in with WWTW to share her transformation from social change advocate to film producer and the power of a potent last name.

WWTW: How did you get involved in the project, and was it difficult to find backing for such a remarkable story?


AD: I found the project totally by accident on a trip to Liberia to explore how I could be helpful through my foundation. I just heard some women refer to it here and there and started trying to put together all the pieces I was hearing. Little by little I figured out that something incredible had happened and it was unknown outside of Liberia and that just struck me as so deeply wrong.

WWTW: One of the women in “Pray the Devil …” relates the reasons for the ongoing bloodshed (power, money, greed, ethnic tension …). The film doesn’t delve much deeper into the root causes … or the politics. Can you explain why the film took that approach?

AD: Our feeling was that this film was for the women and should be entirely from their perspective. And to them, those causes were so petty and uninteresting compared with the agony they were suffering. At the end of the day they really believed that it was only a power grab and all the other reasons were covers for that anyway. To go into any detail was to dignify the warlords entirely more than they deserved to be dignified.

To read the complete interview, please visit the What Would Toto Watch Website.