A Filmmaker Dreamed of ‘Africa’

Sometimes motivation can come from the most unlikely places. For executive producer Jennifer Lawson, the driving impetus to undertake a documentary series on Africa for PBS was the result of hearing “Africa--what a country!” one too many times.

“It’s a continent,” Lawson retorts, “not a country.”

The filmmaker was troubled by the notion that so many know so little of the second-largest continent and the land where civilization began.

And so was born “Africa,” an eight-part series that kicks off the 20th anniversary of “Nature,” which begins on KCET Sunday night.

The African continent was a natural topic for “Nature” to explore because of its diversity: from the vast sand waves billowing across the Sahara Desert to the vibrantly lush jungles of the Cameroon rainforests; the thriving wildlife and wealth of mineral resources of gold, salt and diamonds; and its people and their multitude of cultures, languages and religious rites.

Benefiting from the artfully visual collaboration of Thirteen/WNET’s “Nature” and National Geographic Television, each hourlong segment of “Africa” is beautifully shot and well-constructed.

Stitched together by narrator-actor Joe Morton, the narrative chronicles the floral and fauna, as well as the ecological and human evolution, that have affected this eclectic mosaic for millions of years.

The series opens with the story of Alice Wangui, a salon owner in Nairobi, following her to her ancestral village in Kikuyu, where she’ll give birth to her second child.

Despite her doctor’s warnings, Wangui is determined to give her daughter a sense of her heritage the moment she draws her first breath.

Since living in Tanzania, from 1970 to 1972, and traveling throughout western and northern Africa, Lawson had wanted to capture “the diversity and richness” of the continent, and indeed the series reflects that.

Two years ago, the former PBS programming executive, who now heads her own independent film company in Washington, D.C., got her chance to tell that story after pitching the idea to the network.

Joining a team of writers and 57 film crews dispersed throughout Africa, who lived among the villagers and urban dwellers, Lawson believes she’s been able to tell the stories Africans want told.

“My intent is to defy some of the lingering stereotypes about Africa,” Lawson says, noting the popular images of age-old jungle savages and modern day anti-government barbarians, “and to do that, it was important for us to hear directly from Africans, and not to interpret them in our own words.”

In one case, a film crew followed the romantic journeys of young Fulani boys who must take their cattle for grazing hundreds of miles away from their home, where their girlfriends, who’ve been primping and adorning themselves for months, eagerly await their return.

Another episode features the Baka tribe, a diminutive, communal people secluded in the rainforests of Cameroon until commercial loggers from the outside world invade their once peaceful existence.

Then there’s the perilous trek of 9-year-old Adam Ilius, who travels across the Sahara Desert with his camel and a caravan of salt traders from his Tuareg village in a traditional rite of passage.

From one episode to the next, the filmmakers create aggregate stories through each traveler’s odyssey.

“By choosing stories where people themselves are in motion, or traveling, they become our guide through the region,” explains Lawson.

“So as little Adam travels on the caravan, we then have a natural way of moving through the Sahara--exploring that area and its history.”

Even so, charting such a broad landscape as Africa, Lawson says, would have been treacherous without a central theme.

“Prior to filming I had to sketch out what I thought was the common thread that ran through all the programs--and that was the land,” says Lawson.

“You have all of these different societies, different cultures and different languages, but what the African people have in common was this continent.

“So we have stories that would connect us to the land and the regional and ecological differences that help define a way of life there.”

The stories as told by the continent’s inhabitants, she says, provide a different sense of the world than what most Americans are exposed to through television news reports.

“Here [in America] we often hear only of Africa through the news of the AIDS tragedy in South Africa, a soccer incident in Accra or the diamond killings in Sierra Leone,” Lawson says, “but we don’t hear about this place where 600 million people are accomplishing things every day.

“We don’t hear anything about the positive accomplishments that are taking place in Africa.”

Like the story of Xoliswa Vanda, the first black woman to manage a gold mine in South Africa, who was admittedly “quite amazed that somebody wanted to tell my story,” she says.

“But my story is the story of South Africa, the story of Africa--and if the world is interested in listening, then certainly I must tell my story.”

And when she eventually saw her episode, which is featured in the last installment of the series, “it actually moved me,” says the 26-year-old during a Los Angeles promotional tour for the project.

“When you live the life, it’s different when you sit back and watch it.”

Interspersed through her account, as the sole woman among 5,000 workers, is the tragic saga of her fellow miners.

With the price of gold steadily declining, they are plagued with worries of pending layoffs, just as many are stricken with HIV and AIDS.

“HIV and AIDS is the biggest problem in Africa,” Vanda says, “but not just in South Africa ... , all over the world.

“I’m hoping that with this series people will see Africa through our eyes and begin to see that there are people living in Africa who have similar problems as everybody else.”

As is typical of many of the informational entertainment series on PBS, “Africa” is being launched as a multiform project.

The release of the series is accompanied by a wide range of media companion vehicles, including a coffee table book by author John Reader and photographer Michael Lewis, a “Making of ‘Africa”’ video, a musical compilation CD, online interactive activities (at https://www.pbs.org/africa) and photo and art exhibits in Washington, D.C.

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Part 1 of “Nature’s” “Africa” can be seen Sunday at 9 p.m. on KCET, with subsequent episodes airing consecutive Sundays also at 9.