Gini Reticker, an Academy Award nominated Producer and Emmy-winning Director, is one of the creators of Women, War & Peace. She is the Director of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, winner of Tribeca’s Best Documentary 2008. Below she reflects on the power of storytelling and the role of women in peace building. Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Episode 2 of Women, War & Peace, airs tomorrow, Tuesday, October 18th at 10pm EST. (Check Local Listings.)

I am elated that Pray the Devil Back to Hell is airing tonight night on PBS, almost exactly 5 years to the day I met Leymah Gbowee – who is among the three women who just won the Nobel Peace Prize! Back then, as I listened to her recount her story of what women in Liberia did to bring an end to the 14 year civil war, I remember thinking: How can it be that I don’t know this story? I considered myself to be well read, and particularly well informed on women in Africa after filming three stories on women there. Yet I had never heard this story of what ordinary women did to bring peace to their country.

They organized in their churches and in their mosques. They joined hands across religious and ethnic barriers. Together, they stepped out into the blazing hot sun, linked arms on a major street in the capital, Monrovia, and refused to be moved. They chanted: “We want peace, no more war,” until the tyrant Charles Taylor could no longer ignore them. They told Taylor they were fed up and demanded he meet with the rebel leaders. Then they took their message to the rebel leaders and demanded they meet with Taylor. And when peace talks faltered, they surrounded the peace hall and refused to let the men out until they reached a comprehensive peace agreement.

In 2006, when I traveled to Monrovia with Leymah to meet many of the other women who participated in the mass action, I was uncertain of what I would find. As I listened to about 25 women recount their experience, I asked how they managed to be so brave. One of them told me that when they were frightened or depressed, they would sing together. And when one of them began to hum, they all joined in singing a religious song about the walls of Jericho tumbling down. As the chills ran down my spine, I was overcome with a tremendous sense of responsibility to find a way to have the women tell their own story, in their own words, so audiences could meet them in the same way that I was able to meet them. I wanted to make sure that their story would not disappear because the press had failed to capture it.

We began shooting on Mother’s Day in 2007, a day which meant a lot to me because my own mother died on Mother’s Day. The theme of motherhood carried its way through the film: from Leymah’s first story of her hungry son crying for food that the war had stripped her of the ability to provide, to the end of the film with the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to be elected as a head of state in Africa. And on a very personal note, I am pleased that the film will have its US broadcast premiere on my daughter’s 22nd birthday.

It is beyond deeply satisfying to have Pray the Devil Back to Hell anchor the five part series that I created with my partners Abigail Disney and Pamela Hogan, Women War & Peace. For the first time, we are placing women at the center of an urgent dialogue about conflict and security, and reframing our understanding of modern warfare.  The women of Liberia taught me that peace is a process, it is not an event. We hope that Women, War & Peace will help reveal the critical roles and contributions of women to that process.