FILMING UNDER FIRE
South Surrey documentarian and mother of two takes huge risks to reveal the inspiring stories of Canadian women in combat
Hunkered down in a Blackhawk helicopter watching a medevac team return enemy fire in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, Alison MacLean was faced with a stark choice: obey or aid.
The 55-year-old independent filmmaker from South Surrey was only on the aircraft as an observer on a military training run. But once in the air, the team was directed to rescue injured soldiers pinned down by insurgents.
They landed amid a firefight. Bullets whizzed through the open sides of the helicopter.
“I remember the pilot on the head set saying under no condition was I to leave my jump seat,” MacLean recalled.
But seeing the officers struggle to both return fire and rescue a fellow soldier, MacLean put her camera aside and leaped down to help them drag him in.
In her 2010 documentary, Outside the Wire, MacLean shows footage of the team as they work to staunch the wounds of that bloodied soldier.
What she doesn’t show is the moment she noticed that a bullet had ripped through the bottom of her jump seat.
Personal battles
Close calls are part of the job for this mother of two.
MacLean has worked on the frontlines in Afghanistan, filming the moving stories of NATO soldiers as a one-woman combat camera crew for her company, Tomboy Productions. Her recent documentaries focus on the untold stories of women in the military.
Along the way, she’s enlightened Canadians about the roles of their servicemen and women and has forged links with Afghan policewomen overcoming the odds in order to serve.
To do so she’s had to fight her own personal battles.
MacLean shrugs off the danger involved in her war-zone projects because her closest brush with death came on Canadian soil.
In the mid-1980s, MacLean was working as one of the few sports camerawomen at TSN in Toronto. But her career crashed to a stop on a snowy Ontario road one night in 1986, when a drunk driver collided head-on with her vehicle.
She survived with serious head, neck and spinal injuries that left her with stroke-like symptoms. She was unable to sit up for two hours, let alone haul camera equipment.
“That was very humbling, to be at a point where I lost everything and had to start over,” she said of her fiveyear recovery. “I celebrated the first day I could walk a block.”
There were more blows to come. She lost her job during her recovery. Then she lost her father to an aneurysm.
She launched her own company in order to work reduced hours and produced programs on sports. But her father’s death made her realize her real calling: military documentaries.
“I took a lot of criticism. I was criticized as a mother, with people asking why I was trying to orphan my children.”
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Her father, a Scot who immigrated to Ontario in the early 1950s, was drafted into the British Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He flew over the Middle East conducting aerial surveillance and meticulously photographed his journeys to Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq and Afghanistan in a faded album his daughter treasures.
His interest inspired her to visit Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan in the ’90s as a flight attendant.
“I’d always planned on interviewing him. He had lived such a full life at a young age because of the war, as have all of our veterans.”
She realized that other Second World War veterans were also passing without sharing their stories.
After moving to Vancouver with her now ex-husband in 1998 and having two children, Teyana, now 15, and Skye, 12, MacLean began work on The Power And The Grace in 2002.
The documentary, which aired on Vision TV in 2005, interviews a dozen Canadian women, many in their 80s, who served in the Second World War. They urged her to tell the stories of Canadian women serving in Afghanistan.
“There needed to be war documentaries from new angles,” MacLean said. “I felt that I wanted to show the humanity of war.”
Going Outside the Wire
So in 2010, MacLean embedded with Operation Athena, based at Kandahar Air Field, in the company of Canadian and U.S. troops. She was the only independent filmmaker in the program.
“I’d always worked in crews,” she said. “I’d never been all on my own. But there are times in your life when you have to go for it.” It wasn’t easy. “I took a lot of criticism,” MacLean said. “I was criticized as a mother, with people asking why I was trying to orphan my children.”
As the custodial parent, she had to justify her trip to a war zone in court. Only her children were encouraging. “My daughter thought it was cool. She wanted to try on the body armour.”
Security experts stressed the real risks she took to bring home stories of women in combat.
“My familiarity with the security environment in the areas where Alison has operated leaves me with no illusions about the grave risks she has faced, particularly as an independent filmmaker without the resources that most people would take for granted before even contemplating an assignment in a high-risk environment,” said Martin Cronin, a former British diplomat who was posted to the Middle East.
“The Taliban are determined to stop any positive stories emerging from Afghanistan, let alone any by women about women,” said Cronin, now the Kelowna-based CEO of Helios Global Technologies, a firm that supplied MacLean with her body armour.
MacLean’s documentary, Outside the Wire, which aired on W Network in November 2010, showcased women working as gunners, liaisons, logistics operators, medics and hospital staff.
“I wanted the soldiers to tell their stories without spin, where it wasn’t a news highlight,” she explained.
Her straightforward depictions were well received in the military.
“Alison has been a leader in capturing the deeper story of the sacrifices and service of our women and men in uniform along with those of their families,” said Royal Canadian Navy Rear Admiral William Truelove.
From burkas to bullets
While filming Outside the Wire, MacLean met Afghan police and military women being trained to serve with the Afghan National Security Forces. In September 2012, she returned to Afghanistan, this time to Kabul, to document their stories for a forthcoming documentary called Burkas 2 Bullets.
“They’re a story people aren’t aware of,” she said. “They have smaller numbers and bigger hurdles.” Condemned by the Taliban, female police officers have been murdered by insurgents and male family members.
They earn little respect even in their own ranks, few drive or carry weapons and they are seldom issued uniforms.
The inequality troubled MacLean. So she donated a portion of her profits and partnered with Rotary Clubs to raise $6,500 for uniforms for 100 policewomen in Mazar-e Sharif.
“Alison felt very concerned that these women had no support to buy proper uniforms,” said AnnShirley Goodell, a member of the Rotary Club of Vancouver Sunrise, which assisted MacLean. “The women were walking in 100-degree sands with our equivalent of flipflops.”
B.C. RCMP Cpl. Denise Keatley, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 to assist their police, saw firsthand the difference MacLean’s gift made.
“I believe the knowledge that they are being thought of and supported by women from other countries helps build their confidence and determination to try to make a difference,” Cpl. Keatley said of the Afghan policewomen.
Today, MacLean gives talks around the Lower Mainland and screens her films to raise awareness of ongoing issues in the military.
Once she releases Burkas 2 Bullets, she plans to begin a documentary that examines Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among recent NATO veterans.
She points to the tragedy of nine suicides among Canadian Forces veterans since last November as urgent proof of the need to tell stories of the true consequences of war.
“That is unacceptable to me. I feel we have failed them,” MacLean said. “I want to make sure that we continue to honour the fallen.”