Episode 503 Tamara Dawit Finding Sally

Tamara Dawit and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Finding Sally, Ethiopia, collective memory, history, imperialism, the red terror, cultures of silence and intergenerational conversations.

More info here about Finding Sally here.

Stream it now on CBC Gem.

Synopsis:

Finding Sally tells the incredible story of a 23-year-old woman from an upper-class family who became a communist rebel with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. Idealistic and in love, Sally got caught up in her country’s revolutionary fervour and landed on the military government’s most wanted list. She went underground and her family never saw her again.

Four decades after Sally’s disappearance, Tamara Dawit pieces together the mysterious life of her aunt Sally. She revisits the Ethiopian Revolution and the terrible massacre that followed, which resulted in nearly every Ethiopian family losing a loved one. Her quest leads her to question notions of belonging, personal convictions and political ideals at a time when Ethiopia is going through important political changes once again.

About Tamara:

Tamara Dawit is an Ethiopian-Canadian filmmaker based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she runs a production company, Gobez Media. Tamara also manages the Creative Producers Training Program, which supports the development, training, and export of Ethiopian film and music content. She directed the short film, Grandma Knows Best and the feature documentary Finding Sally that will be released in 2020. She is currently producing the feature documentary Qeerroo and the feature drama the Last Tears of the Deceased. Tamara has experience producing documentary and digital content for CBC News, MTV, Radio-Canada, Discovery, NHK, and Al Jazeera among other networks.

She was in residency with Docs in Progress in Washington, D.C. in 2018 and the Talents Durban documentary lab in 2015. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Film Fatales.

Image Copyright and Credit: Catbird Films and Tamara Dawit.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.