The Great Granny Revolution

Shooting Diary 4

Last One:

I once spent three days with Albertina Sisulu and her husband, Rivonia Trialist Walter Sisulu. I was helping them with media interviews and scheduling while they were in Canada. This was shortly after Walter's release from prison, but before Nelson Mandela's. He was being interviewed on CBC television and Albertina and I had an hour or so stuck in a small room together (under fairly tight security). I asked her how she had maintained her humanity in the face of 18 years of house arrest, the challenge of raising 10 children (5 of them adopted), of having to earn all the money for the family while Walter was in prison. She looked at me and she said that her "greatest fear in all the time was that she would suffer and no one would ever know". That of course was in part why she had dedicated herself to interviews with the media. She wanted her story told. Then she thanked me because, she said, as a publicist I was helping her to do this. It was then that I realised the importance of telling stories.

Grandmother, grandchild and great-grandchild

So here I am. Robert and I hope to tell this story of the Grannies in such a way that people will appreciate the immense courage and determination of these women who are mourning the loss of their own children and raising the next generation. And through the story of the Wakefield Grannies we will show how individuals can make a difference by doing something small. That is our goal.

The road to that goal is through a very complicated process of editing the footage we have shot. Footage of the women of Wakefield filmed over the past 2 years and of the women of Alex shot over these three weeks. Back in Canada we are viewing the tapes and logging them, celebrating our successes such as a great shot of Alex rooftops, and struggling with our misses (some of the best shots are inevitably out of focus.)

We have promised to bring a rough cut to the Grandmother to Grandmother Conference, which precedes the World AIDS Conference in Toronto in August 2006. So stay tuned.