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Field Journal

The Rift

From The Field
The Rift
 
After completing the Marathon Des Sables in 2002, known as the hardest endurance event on the planet, and becoming the first to ever run it in costume, the Save the Rhino team sat down to discuss what they could do next. They came up with the idea of walking the Rift Valley through Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique. In September 2015 Robert Devereux set out to do it himself, attempting to become the first person in the world to do it in one go. The Rift is a film by his son Louis Devereux about the walk. But during its making, it became much more than that; it became the story of the complex relationship between a father and son. We spoke to Louis as he launches a Kickstarter campaign to push the project over the line

Where are you right now and how are you feeling after making the film? 
Back in London and working on the last stages of the film. Getting a film made and ready for general release can feel as hard as a trans-continental odyssey, and so nearing the end makes me feel extremely proud and also a little relieved. It’s a fascinating process to relive an expedition in the editing suite over and over and to try and work out how best to tell the story of a journey that took up seven months of our lives. It’s a joy and a challenge to frame an event into a story, decide on a direction for it to take and have the time and space to reflect on what it means and how the whole process has changed us. In trying to edit the trip into a narrative structure, you can’t help but find yourself asking questions, like why we decide to plan seemingly mad adventures like these and what do we learn from them.

I would definitely say it’s brought me and my father closer together, to a deeper understanding of who the other is. In fact, a piece of advice I’d give to anyone wanting to do a bit of father-son bonding: you could do a lot worse than pointing a camera at him and walking through the barren landscapes of East Africa together.

Why did you decide to do this film with your dad? What was his inspiration?
My dad has always been an explorer and loves an adventure. In 2002 he was part of the first ever team to run the Marathon des Sables in costume, a heavy two-man rhino suit to be exact. It was in aid of a charity called Save the Rhino, which my Dad continues to be passionate about, and which we are supporting with this film. Once they finished the challenge and managed to get out of their costume, they sat down as a team and said, ‘what can we do to top that?’ The answer was to walk the eastern section of the Great Rift Valley. So the seed was planted in my dad’s head then, and had grown to the point that he couldn’t resist it any more.

When Dad mentioned his plan to me, it seemed an obvious subject for a documentary. Originally I envisioned it as a film specifically about the places he would be travelling through, with a storyline from each country that I could weave around the spine of Robert’s walk. I quickly realised, however, that this wasn’t my story to tell. There are people from those areas much better qualified to give accounts of their homelands and in fact the story that I was in the best position to tell centred on my father – to discover what this walk really meant to him, why he wanted to leave behind a successful business life, to isolate himself from family and friends, and at the age of 60 put himself through a physically gruelling ordeal. Plus it was a chance for us to spend time alone together and, aided with the lens of a camera, have the kind of deep and personal conversations that simply don’t arise in the hustle and bustle of normal life.

 
The Rift The Rift
 

What was the key aim of the expedition?
That is a big question and forms the main theme of the documentary. On the simplest level, for Dad, the key aim was to become the first person to walk the Rift in one journey purely for the sake of the challenge it presents. People have done parts of it before but never the whole in one go. Then there was the other appeal for him as someone who has spent a lot of time in Africa as a businessman and philanthropist. Travelling through the continent on foot would give him a chance to get to know the place he has loved all his life in a different light. The slower pace of walking allows time for you to experience and get the feel of a place in a way that cars and planes deny us; a chance to smell the air, feel the earth and get to know its people.

In my view, whether or not he was conscious of it, it was also a chance to explore himself and his life as much as a place. A chance to have six-and-a-half months on his own to really look inside, take stock, work out who he is and what the legacy he was going to leave behind was. He denies that the walk was anything to do with wanting to get away from the past and into the future, or to work out an emotional angst – it was purely about the love of the challenge. My suspicion that this wasn’t quite the case and there was more going on under the surface forms a large part of the film.

The journey created an opportunity and gave a context for us to air difficulties in our relationship as a father and son, to bring up and discuss things he had done when I was a child that had a huge impact on me. In making and releasing the documentary I hope it will encourage people to have an open dialogue with loved ones and people close to you even if they are tricky conversations. It has been a real positive for both of us to get it all out there and have very honest conversations about the decisions he made 20 years ago when he left my mother with four young children.

I also hope it can do a little to help change the Western perception of Africa. The first thing that most people ask is ‘isn’t that dangerous, doing that in Africa?’ Of course, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no, but the fact is that he walked alone for nearly six months – in which time nothing negative happened to him and he was met with generosity and hospitality by almost everyone he met. There is an image of Africa in the developed world as a dangerous and utterly impoverished place that is to be pitied or feared, and hopefully, this film can show that this is not a just reflection of the continent. Certainly the areas we were walking through.

What were the biggest challenges? 
I’d say there were two main challenges: the physical challenge and the emotional challenge. The Lake Turkana section of the walk was the most inhospitable environment I have ever been in, let alone had to film in. Temperatures reached 60˚C, and we had no backup support vehicle to rely on. To walk 35km in that heat with film equipment to contend with was a real physical challenge. Of course now, as so often seems to be the case, it is the section that I look back on most fondly. When the option of giving up or hopping in a car is taken away from you whenever you get a little tired or overheated, and you have no choice but to take another step, you can find reserves you didn’t know you had. It also highlighted how much fitter and stronger my dad is than me, despite being more than twice my age. He seemed to think Lake Turkana was a stroll in the park compared with the Suguta valley that he had completed alone shortly before.

The emotional challenge was to do with the conversations my father and I were having and the long-since buried feelings that they brought up. This then, of course, leads to the question, as the director of the documentary, of how to present them. He is a man that I truly love and shared an amazing experience with, walking with him for nearly half of the time he was out there, but in the process of walking and talking about our lives I also felt a lot of difficult emotions. At times I wanted to hang him out to dry. I’ve settled on a line in the film that I’m really happy with and feel is a fair and true account, but it took time to get here. One of the best things to come out of it all is how much it has improved my relationship with my father. It is quite something to really understand and dig deep into who you are and where you come from.

What is one thing you would tell yourself if you were starting again now? 
I would say allow more time to be still along the route. Firstly from a film production and logistics point of view, it’s a nightmare when you never get more than a few hours to film in one place, but also the places and panoramas and people we came across along the way were so extraordinary that I could have stayed for days.

What was the most important thing you learnt during the expedition? 
The power of conversations, however hard it is to have them. The truth might hurt, but knowledge is power. Once you know the situation and the details then you can form opinions and make judgements. Don’t put anybody in a box because of social conformities. Oh and East Africa is amazing – everyone should definitely visit if given the chance.

To find out more about The Rift visit theriftdoc.com. To see the trailer and support the project, visit The Rift’s Kickstarter page here.

 
The Rift
 

To find out more about The Rift visit theriftdoc.com. To see the trailer and support the project, visit The Rift’s Kickstarter page here.

 

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