Two students and one professor from Ohio University left for Liberia Thursday to launch the filming of a documentary they plan to create when they return to Athens later this month.
In Accra and Monrovia, OU international development studies graduate student Andrew Carlson, OU telecommunications and African studies graduate student Manfred Ashiboe-Mensah and film professor Steven Ross will witness the interim government's inauguration Oct. 14 and will discuss plans for a government to be democratically elected in Jan. 2006.
They will meet with Liberian officials to discuss the future interim government after former dictator Charles Taylor was granted asylum in Nigeria and the recently settled 14-year civil war.
OU has produced good citizens of Liberia
Ashiboe-Mensah said.
OU graduate John Templeton, the third African-American graduate of an American university, focused his thesis on Liberia. OU graduate Edward James Roye, the only Ohioan to become president of a foreign country, was Liberia's fifth president.
Liberian and OU graduate Marcus Dahn, who is involved in the interim government and is helping filmmakers with the documentary, will run for Liberian presidency in 2006.
When they return on October 20, the crew plans to create a 28-minute journalistic piece to air locally and then use funding from this project to launch a larger documentary of PBS caliber, Carlson said.
The project has and will include help from many OU departments.
It's been a really great interdisciplinary project with a lot of people coming together to work on it he said.
The filmmakers obtained funding from several OU departments and the Athens Return Peace Corps Volunteer Group, as well as family and friend contributions.
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Yvonne Teems
