Adama Premieres on the WORLD Channel November 6, 2011
The Story of a 16-Year-Old Muslim Girl Detained by the FBI, Accused of Being a “Potential Suicide Bomber”
(San Francisco) — On March 24th, 2005, Adama Bah, a 16-year-old Muslim girl, awoke at dawn to discover nearly a dozen armed government agents inside her family’s apartment in East Harlem. She was arrested and taken to a maximum-security juvenile detention center in Pennsylvania. An FBI document leaked to the press mysteriously identified Adama as a “potential” suicide bomber and an “imminent threat to the security of the United States.” After six weeks of public protest and media scrutiny, Adama was released with an ankle bracelet and a deportation order, but no terrorist charges. Still traumatized by the experience of her detention, Adama must drop out of high school and support her four younger siblings when her father is deported to Guinea, Africa. Using intimate verité footage, Adama captures the extreme pressures bearing down on this young Muslim girl and her desperate efforts to keep her family from unraveling. Directed by David Felix Sutcliffe, Adama will premiere on the WORLD Channel nationwide November 6, 2011 (check local listings).
About the Filmmakers
David Felix Sutcliffe (Director) is an emerging filmmaker, a multimedia artist, and a youth media educator. He has been honored with a National Scholastic Art and Writing award for his work as a media educator with the Harlem Children’s Zone, and has received artist grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Independent Television Service. He has worked as a cinematographer on films in Paris, Indonesia, and Kansas, and recently returned from a trip to Dadaab Refugee Camp in northern Kenya, where he and producer Su Kim conducted a series of personal documentary workshops with refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan. He is currently working as a teaching artist with the Tribeca Film Institute. Adama is his first full-length film.
Su Kim (Producer) is a documentary producer, based in New York City. Ms Kim has worked with Anne Makepeace, Aviva Slesin, Alice Elliott, Jill Eikenberry, and Michael Tucker. Most recently she co-produced Kimjongilia (directed by NC Heikin), which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and Adama, an ITVS Open Call-funded documentary. Ms Kim was awarded a CPB/PBS Producers Workshop scholarship and participated in the 2008 Sundance Institute's Independent Producers Conference.
About ITVS
The Independent Television Service (ITVS) funds and presents award-winning documentaries and dramas on public television, innovative new media projects on the Web, and the Emmy® Award-winning weekly series Independent Lens on Tuesday nights at 10pm on PBS. ITVS is a miracle of public policy created by media activists, citizens, and politicians seeking to foster plurality and diversity in public television. ITVS was established by a historic mandate of Congress to champion independently produced programs that take creative risks, spark public dialogue, and serve underserved audiences. Since its inception in 1991, ITVS programs have revitalized the relationship between the public and public television, bringing television audiences face-to-face with the lives and concerns of their fellow Americans. For more information about ITVS, visit itvs.org. ITVS is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
CONTACT: Krissy Bailey, krissy_bailey@itvs.org, 415-356-8383, ext 254