LNP Alumni Feature: Tamara Dawit (’20)
Tamara Dawit, Fall 2020
Director/Producer
@gobezmedia | www.gobez.ca
This week we touch base with Ethiopian-Canadian filmmaker Tamara Dawit. Tamara recently directed “Finding Sally,” a personal investigation into the mysterious life of her aunt Sally, an Ethiopian aristocrat-turned-communist-rebel who disappeared during the Ethiopian Revolution. We had the opportunity to find out what Tamara is currently working on, both on and off screen.
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Where are you living now?
I’m in Canada. I’m sort of lying low here until things are more certain in terms of both the pandemic in Ethiopia and also the political and security situation.
Did you have much exposure to Ethiopian culture growing up in Canada?
It was sort of hit or miss, which is probably why my last two films were very much about me reconnecting to my Ethiopian family or to Ethiopian contemporary history. I was born in Canada and because of the revolution it was not safe to go back so my family stayed in Canada. I was primarily raised by my British Ukrainian mother and, because once the communist government left all of my relatives moved back to Ethiopia, there was less ability to connect to that culture. I think a lot of what I heard about Ethiopia was pre-revolution, very glamorous and almost like a fairy tale, because those were the memories that it was comfortable for my family to talk about. Those were the happier times, whereas my film “Finding Sally” is about the period that they didn’t talk about and what actually happened and why they have so much pain and baggage. I think the films I make are very much informed by who I am and where I grew up, and I think another Ethiopian filmmaker wouldn’t be able to treat those topics in the same way because I have a bit of distance and I have a different cultural upbringing.
When you were a Logan Nonfiction fellow you were working on a film about the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. Is that story personal to you also?
I think within a lot of these stories there’s a personal connection, which is how you find out about it. Even with “Finding Sally,” I found out about it because of my family’s connection to the revolution. I think that I direct when there is a story I feel should be told and there’s no one else that can tell the story. Some of the work I’m directing right now is because it’s about human rights and social justice, and other Ethiopian filmmakers may feel unsafe to touch those topics. People don’t know about what happened during the Italian occupation in Ethiopia. This was really the first mass atrocity of the Second World War, and what the Italians did in Ethiopia is what the Nazis looked at and said “oh, well no one said anything about what they’re doing over there, so I guess we’re good to go ahead and do these things.” It’s really part of my drive to document human rights issues.
Were you able to talk with survivors and people who lived through that period?
I’m using source materials because most of the survivors have passed away. There’s also a batch of audio interviews that were collected by the emperor after the Second World War – parts of which I want to weave into the film. The emperor had these witnesses and survivors record their testimonies because he was hoping to have a court case to have the Italians brought to court and forced to account for what happened. But of course he never got his day in court. I’ve spent some time talking to the Armenian community about the testimonies in archives at the University of Southern California with the Shoah Foundation, and how those archives were captured, how they’re being stored, because to me this is a really similar piece of work that is really at risk of being completely forgotten.
Do you plan to distribute the film in Canada and Ethiopia?
It’s very important to make sure it’s accessible to people in Ethiopia, and it’s accessible in all languages in Ethiopia, so that means making sure the film is dubbed. And I think it’s also important to make sure it’s accessible in Italy. Although the film is about what happened in Ethiopia, the history is very much neglected or forgotten in Italy today. The Italians should know what happened, so when they think back to the Second World War this isn’t something that’s swept under the rug.
Is the Ethiopian filmmaking community growing?
It is very similar to Nigeria or Tanzania where there’s a huge domestic film industry but very little of that comes out of the country. We did a study a few years ago for the European Union and we found they were about 150 films produced per year – these are films with full production budgets of maybe $10 to $30,000 USD, and in local languages – so they aren’t at a level of production quality that can be sold or screened anywhere outside the country.
You are also an advocate for access and equity in filmmaking.
I do a lot of work on the programming side around training and capacity building for filmmakers. Bringing those who are at the point where they are ready to do meetings with funders or decision makers to film festivals and film markets, curating those meetings, sometimes bringing in decision makers to Ethiopia and having meetings with them, building export and market access connections as well. That’s really what I’ve been focused on, because I realized while shooting my own film that there’s so many stories to be told, but there’s a lack of access and I’ve had more agency to be connected to those things because of my Canadian side. I am a founder of the The Racial Equity Media Collective, which is a policy and race-based data collection organization in Canada that works in the screen sector. I do a lot of my international work usually representing the REMC but sometimes I’ve gone to festivals or events with Brown Girls Doc Mafia as well, or with Film Fatales, which is a U.S.-based organization for female directors.
Before you got into filmmaking you worked in the music industry. What did you do?
I was a manager, I was a booking agent, I was a road manager , I was a publicist. . . and finally within a funding agency.
You have a lot of different skills. Do you think it helps you as a filmmaker to have all those backup skills?
I think it’s definitely what helps as a producer, because I think being a producer you are doing all those things, or at the minimum you are overseeing all of those people. You have to understand financing, marketing and distribution. But I think that directing is a nice time to sort of step back from that and take a breath, because it’s more the creative side.
Are you able to separate your producer side from your director side?
Hopefully, but not always.