Director: Micah Schaffer

Running Time: 1:04:00

For more information visit: www.deathoftwosons.com

Awards:
• Audience Award, Leeds International Film Festival
• Audience Award, Denver Pan-African Film Festival
• HBO Life Through Your Lens Emerging Filmmaker Award Winner

Official Selection:
• New York African Diaspora Film Festival
• Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
• urbanworld/VIBE Film Festival
• San Francisco Black Film Festival
• Brooklyn Arts Council Film Festival

On February 4, 1999, four New York City Police officers killed Amadou Diallo on his own doorstep in a hail of 41 bullets. Jesse Thyne, an American Peace Corps volunteer who lived and worked with Amadou’s family in his home village in Africa, died there less than a year after Amadou’s shooting. DEATH OF TWO SONS examines the political, personal, and spiritual implications of these two deaths.

After studying history and anthropology at Stanford University, Micah Schaffer worked as a Peace Corp volunteer in Guinea, West Africa. While attending the Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO), he was inspired to become a filmmaker. Upon returning to the United States, he attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Micah directed several short documentaries, including YAHYA, the story of a white American who converts to Islam while living in Brooklyn. Micah was the cinematographer on SHADOWS OF A LEADER: GADAFFI'S FEMALE BODYGUARDS, an official selection at the Montreal World Film Festival. He is currently working on a documentary about Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, Africa's first female president.

What inspired you to make this piece?

I was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea, West Africa, when two events prompted me to begin the exploration that was to become DEATH OF TWO SONS. The first was the death of two of my colleagues, Justin Bhansali and Jesse Thyne. When they died, many Guineans in my village (who hadn't known these boys at all) came to offer me their heartfelt condolences. I was struck by the sincerity of their response; after all, most of the people I was living with had lost at least one child in infancy to disease.

The second event was the trial of the police officers who had killed Amadou Diallo. I felt moved to go and apologize to Amadou's family on behalf of our country for what had happened to Amadou, until I learned that another volunteer already had. Jesse Thyne lived with Amadou's family in Guinea, a coincidence that for me contained some deeper, unknown, spiritual meaning (one that, to this day, is hard to define). Placing the two events side by side, I started asking myself questions: "Are we more sorry about some deaths than others? Aren't all deaths equally tragic? Why do we value some lives more than others?" I was struck by the universality of death, and decided that it would make a good foundation for a film.

Briefly tell us about how you made your film or video: what camera and format did you use to shoot your piece, and what system did you use to edit it? What is your working process? Did you use any special techniques to make this work?

Our cinematographer, Cary Fukunaga, did an excellent job of bringing both New York and Guinea to life. He focused on the human experience and used natural light beautifully. Consequently, I think we were able to present a very intimate, honest view of the immigrant experience in New York, as well as of Amadou Diallo's home (Cary used a special color palette on the Panasonic DVX-100 to highlight Guinea's emotional warmth). Our two AVID editors, Dena Mermelstein and Martha Skolnik, poured their hearts into this project and wove these two lives together in a poetic way.

Do you have any interesting behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this particular work?

This is truly a project that was guided throughout by an unseen hand, something larger than just the filmmaker's vision. One story that exemplifies this occurred when we went to visit Amadou Diallo's grave site. Amadou's father, Saikou, was extremely generous in allowing us to film in the village where Amadou is buried, not far from where Jesse lived. In the middle of the night we heard women wailing -- a cousin of Amadou's had been sick and had died. It seemed significant to me that in a village of about 100 people, someone had passed away on the one night that we were present. The next day, in what seemed like a mirror of Jesse Thyne's experience, the Diallo family invited us to attend and shoot the funeral. The metaphoric opening scene of DEATH OF TWO SONS comes from that.

What is the relationship between your work as a video/filmmaker and life in the New York metropolitan area?

DEATH OF TWO SONS is the result of a collaboration between producer Alrick Brown and myself. While I was in Guinea, Alrick was here in New York. He was deeply moved by the Diallo shooting, and was heavily involved in protesting, writing, and teaching around the issue. Alrick and I were able to approach this event from both sides of the Atlantic, and in so doing, to bring this New York story into a world context. We New Yorkers tend to think of our city as the center of the world. This is a somewhat imperialist concept, but New York is such a marvelously diverse city, and many of the things that drive world events do happen here. The Diallo shooting was a New York event that had a global significance. By showing the human side of Amadou Diallo, we tried to emphasize this universality of experience.

What films/videos and makers have inspired or influenced your work and why?

One of the objectives that Alrick and I had in making DEATH OF TWO SONS was to present a more dynamic image of both Africans and African Americans than the one typically seen on television here in the United States. Two films in particular inspired me in this regard: WHEN WE WERE KINGS (the tale of Mohammed Ali's title fight in Kinshasa) and Spike Lee's FOUR LITTLE GIRLS. Both are tremendously dramatic, well-crafted stories that elevate the human experience to an almost supernatural level of importance. Both of these movies are first and foremost films about human beings, and that's why they work so well.

If viewers are interested in obtaining copies of your work for rental and purchase, whom should they contact and at what address and phone number?

The DEATH OF TWO SONS DVD will be released for general sale on October 1. To find out how to purchase a copy, please go to our Web site (www.deathoftwosons.com) and sign up for our e-mail list to get updates.

You can contact us directly at contact@deathoftwosons.com or 212.501.6260.

For publicity inquiries please contact Claudine Moore at C. Moore Media, claudine@cmooremedia.com.