The New Boats

Phillips Bicycles - Publicity Films for West Africa

From the West Midlands to West Africa: tour the Phillips bicycle plant in Smethwick and see the products in action overseas.

Anwar

Alex Txikon, internationally renowned mountaineer, is launching a new winter expedition in 2021 to Manaslu (Nepal). It is the first non-polluting ascent, powered by solar panels. With this sustainable system, which reduces the energy footprint in accordance with the Paris Agreements, the EKI Foundation is beginning its work of solidarity. Alex is going to learn about the work developed by the Foundation in Sierra Leone, where they provide solar energy systems that enable energy autonomy in schools and hospitals. Txikon proposes to replicate this idea in a very special school in the Diamer Valley in Pakistan, the Günter Mountain School, uniting two different but at the same time equal cultures.

Magicians of the Earth: Kings of the Water

Cyprien Tokoudagba is from the city of Abomey in the Benin Republic of West Africa, where he paints the religious houses of the vodun. Haas and his film crew follow Cyprien as he first paints and then takes part in the ceremony to open a new temple. The paintings include three vodun figures and several emblems, including a pipe and a duck. Cyprien explains his work in the context of the religion and takes the crew to film two other local ceremonies, one where the dead are believed to come back to instruct the living through wild dancing and, another, where women warriors perform their war dances.

Cry Freetown

An account of the victims of the Sierra Leone Civil War and depicts the most brutal period with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels capturing the capital city on January 1999.

Hell

Chennu committed his first crime when he was 15 years old: being a street kid. And he entered hell: Pademba Road. The adult prison in Freetown. In hell, Mr. Sillah is in charge, and there is no hope. Chennu got out after four years. Now he wants to go back.

Blood Diamonds

Blood Diamonds is a made-for-TV documentary series, originally broadcast on the History Channel, that looks into the trade of diamonds which fund rebellions and wars in many African nations. The program focuses primarily on two nations: Sierra Leone and Angola. Diamonds which are traded for this purpose are known as blood diamonds.

The Writer from a Country Without Bookstores

The ruthless dictator Teodoro Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron hand since 1979. Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is the most translated Equatoguinean writer, but he had to flee the country in 2011, after starting a hunger strike denouncing the crimes of the dictatorship. Since then, he has lived in Spain, feeling that, despite the risks, he must return and fight the monster with words.

The Dark Side of Chocolate

A team of journalists investigate how human trafficking and child labor in the Ivory Coast fuels the worldwide chocolate industry. The crew interview both proponents and opponents of these alleged practices, and use hidden camera techniques to delve into the gritty world of cocoa plantations.

Awoko

Shot over one night in the loud, dimly lit printing press, this is the story of the men whose labour lies behind Sierra Leone's oldest daily newspaper.

Love and Sex in West Africa

Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal – when it comes to love and sex, these African countries are caught between tradition and modernity.

Mögöbalu, Les Maîtres des Tambours d'Afrique

Djembefola

African drummer leaves village, makes it big in the world. Great drumming!!

People of the Sea

On the Magdalen Islands, during the short lobster season, fishermen and plant workers ensure the economic prosperity of an entire people. In the reality of a global market driven by the United States, the fragility of the fishing industry is palpable, as is the future of seafaring and island culture.

Survivors

Survivors presents an intimate portrait of Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the sociopolitical turmoil that lies in its wake.

Battle on the Great River

After an unsuccessful attempt in 1946 to film a traditional bangaoui (hippopotamus hunt) on the Niger River, Jean Rouch returns several years later to document the ritual in full. The film records the ceremonial preparations, spiritual practices, and seasonal hunt conducted by Sorko fishermen, situating the event within its cultural and ritual context rather than as spectacle.

Outbreak

FRONTLINE spent months on the ground in West Africa, tracing the Ebola outbreak’s path through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in 2014 and 2015 and uncovering the hidden story of what happened before the world started paying attention. The documentary shared firsthand accounts from survivors and victims’ family members — from the forest region of Guinea to the bustling Liberian capital of Monrovia — including the father of a one-year-old Guinean child who was believed to be the first person to die in the outbreak.

Zoo Quest to West Africa

In September 1954, David Attenborough, cameraman Charles Lagus, Jack Lester and Alf Woods, both from the Zoological Society of London, set out for Sierra Leone. They spent three months intently surveying the landscapes of Sierra Leone in search of nature’s rarest animals. Although predominantly searching for Picathartes gymnocephalus (the White-necked Rockfowl) they hoped to take back to London a representative collection of the whole of animal life in this part of Africa.

On Freedom of Movement (wi de muv)

The film considers what it means to be free to move, not as in leave or flee, but to move. It explores the ability of the environments we live in – especially cities – to create the space people need to move. Shot in Freetown, Sierra Leone, it explores the power of the creative sectors in the city and their immense potential.

Standing Among The Living

As the latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus continues to spread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this remarkable film reveals the full horror of a full-scale Ebola epidemic - that which hit Sierra Leone in 2014. By the time it was brought under control, eighteen months later, more than 3,500 were dead and thousands more infected. The film begins as Ebola arrives in one of Sierra Leone’s main towns, Makeni, home to a local film-maker Tyson Conteh. Tyson and his film crew risked their lives to record at close quarters the tragedy unfolding around them. Sadly, not all of the film-makers survived. But what they recorded over months of filming isn’t just recent history - “Standing Among the Living” provides a grim warning for the future.

African Awakening

Among the many parts of the world in which Unilever companies operate, West Africa has a special place. The Africa of popular imagination is a land of jungles, swamps and mud huts; but side by side with the traditional, a new Africa is growing and the film "African Awakening” is an expression of this, of the attitudes of those African men and women who are today the driving force of West African progress. “African Awakening”, a colour film which runs for 38 minutes, is one of a series of Unilever films dealing with different aspects of African life.