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LIONESS Outreach Journal: Engaging Americans Around the Changing Role of Women in Combat

Published on July 24, 2010

Interview by Shira Golding

Since Lioness premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in London in March 2008, the documentary has been educating audiences and empowering women who have served in combat to tell their stories and fight for their rights. Lioness has been embraced by the Department of Veteran Affairs and played an instrumental role in the recent passage of the ground-breaking Women Veterans Bill.

For their film Lioness, filmmakers Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers crafted an effective outreach campaign that contributed to the passage of the Caregivers and Veterans Healthcare Services Act.

Shira Golding: Can you describe Lioness for readers who haven’t seen it yet?

Room 11 Productions (Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers): Lioness tells the story of five Army support soldiers who served together in Iraq for a year (2003-2004) and returned home having served as part of this country’s first generation of women combat veterans. Trained as mechanics, supply clerks and engineers, these women had a deep commitment to serve. They went outside the wire as part of an on-the-ground program called “Team Lioness.” Their mission was to assist the infantry in defusing tensions with Iraqi women and children during house searches and at traffic control checkpoints. These women did not expect to find themselves in ground combat, but when they did, they rose to the occasion displaying courage and determination. Returning home they had to draw upon a different kind of courage as they confronted a population that had little understanding or appreciation for the changing role servicewomen play in the current conflicts. As a result, the Lioness women viewed their participation in the documentary as a way of reframing the conversation about how women serve. Their candid narratives describing their experiences in Iraq combined with scenes from their lives back home form a portrait of the emotional and psychological effects of war from a female point of view.

SG: What inspired you to make the film?

Room 11: After U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003, we were struck by claims that American servicewomen were involved in the fighting to a greater degree than ever before. Yet actual coverage of this story by mainstream media was minimal. We decided to investigate. In the course of our research, which included talking to individuals with knowledge about women in the military, it soon became clear to us that a turning point had been reached. The growing insurgency in Iraq was obliterating the notion of a front line and the support units in which women serve were increasingly in the line of fire. As a result, the official policy banning women from serving in direct ground combat was being severely tested, if not violated, on a regular basis.

Recognizing this disconnect between policy and reality, our goal as filmmakers was to find a story that would capture this historic shift. At the same time, the narrative needed to be powerful enough to create a space in the national cultural dialogue for the women’s voices to be heard. Once we learned about the Lioness program we knew we had found our story.

SG: In what ways is it a departure or an extension of your previous documentary work?

Room 11: Our interest in making Lioness was a natural extension of our previous work in that it was driven by specific desire to understand a world very different from our own. We were drawn to the opportunity to look beyond the headlines of the moment, find the deeper story that was not obvious and discover what the stakes were at a human and emotional level.

SG: How did you find women who were willing to speak so openly about their experiences in combat, especially since that kind of participation by women is officially illegal?

Room 11: When we first met the Lionesses who had served with the 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Infantry Division in Ramadi, they had been back in the U.S. for a year and it was clear that what they had experienced in Iraq was only part of the story; the rest was unfolding in their lives back home. As we began filming, we found that our ability to gain access to their daily lives and personal stories was directly related to our attitude of discovery. We never assumed we knew what life was like for these women. Instead, we tried to understand the logic of their world and the choices they had made. We were especially interested in their competence, viewing them as important historical actors rather than victims. Once the women understood this, they came to trust our intentions and became collaborators in the filmmaking process.

Although we personally opposed the invasion of Iraq, our intent was not to use the film to make a partisan argument about the validity or execution of the war. The military is the largest public institution in the United States and as citizens we felt it was important to learn more about how it operated and who was serving in our name. Without this sort of understanding, the national conversation about war and the role of the armed forces in our democracy becomes impoverished. In fact, we knew the Lionesses’ experiences in Anbar province had far reaching implications, not just in terms of the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq, but as a compelling example of the larger need for a national security strategy that focuses more on human security and less on coercion. Our aim was to create an intimate portrait with the dramatic power to move audiences and foster meaningful dialogue about what women have been doing and the larger issues their service raises.

Our non-polemical approach gave us a credibility with our subjects that would prove invaluable during the outreach phase. All five women from our film enthusiastically participated in both festival and community-based screenings. Their collective support, despite differences in rank, education and political persuasion, set a tone of shared openness and constructive dialogue that was critical to the success of our outreach and engagement.

SG: What were your biggest production challenges and how did you overcome them?

Room 11: It was a learning experience to negotiate the necessary permissions with the Army. Although they were receptive to assisting us, it took a lot of time to work through various chains of command because the Army is a large institution with lots of moving parts. It helped that we were very clear with the Army Public Affairs Office about our intentions from the outset and that we had a lot of patience.

Locating the Lioness soldiers, several of whom had left the service by 2005 and were dispersed across the U.S., was not an easy task. In our case, it made a big difference that once we found the soldiers, both officers and enlisted, they were willing to tell their stories so we had a good starting point. It sometimes surprises people to learn that, in fact, the Army was open to assisting us and to providing those permissions we needed.

SG: What impact were you hoping to make with the film after its completion and how did you go about developing outreach strategies?

Room 11: Given the complexity of the issues arising from the problem we defined in the film—ambiguity around women in combat—we decided that the most effective starting point for our outreach strategy was to focus on women veterans’ healthcare. Some of the most compelling scenes are part of Lioness Shannon Morgan’s story. A country girl from Arkansas, she ended up fighting alongside the Marines in some of the bloodiest firefights of the Iraq war. She openly discusses the severity of her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how it prevented her from going back to school to pursue a college degree. Audience reaction to Shannon’s narrative, echoed by other women’s stories, confirmed our intention to position the film as an educational tool – an empathy engine – to expand the image of the “combat soldier/veteran” to include women.

We wanted to draw attention to the gap between official policy and what was actually happening on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our outreach strategy was based on partnerships with the Center for women Veterans at the VA and the veteran service organization Disabled American Veterans. These partnerships were the result of relationships that developed organically during the filmmaking process. Through these partnerships we organized screenings and events where we were able to get the film in front of key decision-makers at the VA and on Capitol Hill.

SG: Can you share some of the ways Lioness has been used to raise awareness of women’s combat experiences?

Room 11: Lioness screened on the festival circuit in 2008 and 2009. At the same time, we worked closely with the Center for Women Veterans. Their embrace of the film led to the Department of Veterans Affairs purchasing DVD copies of the film for all of its medical libraries across the country. As VA staffers have learned about the film, they have organized screenings for doctors, nurses, and others who work directly with women veterans, and additional screenings were organized by a range of veteran service organizations. While these screenings were validating for many women veterans in their communities, they were also beneficial for healthcare workers because the women’s stories educated them on the range of experiences women service-members were bringing home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

SG: What is the Women Veterans Bill and what role did Lioness play in getting it signed into law?

Room 11: The Caregivers and Veterans Healthcare Services Act of 2010 increases funding and expands healthcare facilities at VA facilities for women veterans and was signed into law by President Obama on May 5, 2010. We worked closely with one of the bill’s sponsors on the Hill, Senator Patty Murray, in 2009, appearing with her at a press conference and connecting her to the women in our film. When the legislation passed the Senate last fall, Senator Murray acknowledged the important role the women in our film played:

“The documentary LIONESS helped drive home the importance of this legislation by putting names and faces to a new generation of female veterans. The brave women depicted in the film have helped lawmakers understand the sacrifices and challenges women face as soldiers and veterans.”
-Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)
Senior Member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

SG: When is the educational version of the DVD coming out and what does it include that will be of special use to educators?

Room 11: The educational DVD will include a one-hour version of the film, which will be good for classroom use and for federal employees who have standard one-hour lunch breaks and who want to attend screenings at their work site. It also includes a number of bonus features, including a brief history of women in combat since WWII and a curriculum guide for teachers. It will be released soon—check our site for updates.

SG: Is there anything else happening with the film and/or the women veterans it features that you’d like to share?

Room 11: The outreach, which has far outlasted our expectations, continues with screenings booked into the fall. Next week the film will be screened in Farmington, NM as part of an initiative on the part of New Mexico Department of Veterans Affairs to reach out to native women veterans from Navajo, Hopi, and Apache tribes, among others, in the Four Corners area. We are excited about this screening as we have not had the opportunity to work with this group of women veterans before. Also, we’ve recently finished a report on the impact of our film. “Cultivating Change: Lioness Impact Report” can be downloaded for free from our website.

Shira Golding is a filmmaker, musician and community activist based in Ithaca, NY. Check out her work at Shirari Industries.

This article is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. It was originally published on MediaRights.org, a project of Arts Engine, Inc. This notice must accompany the article at all times.

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