Once again, they won't be ignored

After 14 years of devastating civil war, the women of Liberia had had enough. They had witnessed their husbands' murders, fled their torched villages and grown to fear and despise the young boys recruited as rebel soldiers. Founded by freed American slaves, the West African republic had descended into a nation of displaced people, with no electricity, running water, hospitals, banks or schools.

Amid overwhelming destruction and despair, the women built something. Their Mass Action for Peace brought together Christians and Muslims, who took to the streets in daily protest and prayer and who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to end the violence.

The women's greatest triumph -- and one of the most potent passages in the new documentary "Pray the Devil Back to Hell" -- was their sit-in at stalled 2003 peace talks in Ghana. Barricading the conference site, the Liberian women refused to let representatives of the warring factions out of the building until they had reached an agreement.

For Leymah Gbowee, one of the movement's leaders, her frustration over the stalemate was so shattering that she threatened to undress -- culturally, a gesture of extreme shame and anguish.

"When people snap, it's either they do the worst or they do the best," Gbowee said recently from Ghana. "And at that moment for me, the worst was stripping naked and letting them know that there was no more degradation, there was no more humiliation that we could feel as women of Liberia. There was no more pain that we could feel for our children."

Despite their courage and perseverance, despite their role in ending the war and toppling dictator Charles Taylor -- making way for President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the African continent's first elected female head of state -- the Liberian women's work went largely unnoticed by major news organizations.

"It's just this incredible disappearing story," according to Abigail E. Disney, producer of "Pray the Devil Back to Hell." The film gathers new interviews and archival footage from nearly three years of peace demonstrations to illuminate an untold chapter of recent history.

Locating that footage required particular resourcefulness on the part of Disney and director Gini Reticker. Almost everything they found came not from CNN or BBC but from "private individuals who just happened to be there with cameras," Disney said.

Media snub