A Sept. 16 screening of the film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” a documentary about the civil war and the Christian and Muslim women’s peace movement in Liberia, will serve as a prelude to Gonzaga University’s sixth Presidential Speaker Series lecture next month featuring Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Gonzaga Law Professor Mary Pat Treuthart will introduce film at 7 p.m. in the Barbieri Courtroom at the Gonzaga Law School and will facilitate a discussion afterward. The Gonzaga Journal of International Law sponsors the free and public event.
The film follows the silent protest of thousands of women – mothers, grandmothers, aunts and daughters, both Christian and Muslim – united outside of the Liberian Presidential Palace in 2003 to demand a resolution of the long-running and ruinous civil war. Their actions were a critical element in bringing about an agreement during the stalled peace talks. Following its premiere in 2008, the film has won numerous awards.
Sirleaf, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace and Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state, will speak at Gonzaga’s McCarthey Athletic Center at 7 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 4.
