Guinean Filmmaker Paul Théa Speaks About His ‘Slave Route’ Project · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Paul Théa in his studio. Image published with permission.
Through his films featuring victims and their families, Paul Théa has long been involved in telling the stories of the horrors of Guinea's Camp Boiro. He has recently started a project documenting the slave route from where slaves were captured in the coastal regions of Guinea to their final destination in North America.
Global Voices (GV): Recently we've seen you post very enthusiastic messages on Facebook about reclaiming an old building. What is that all about?
As I was saying earlier, the slaves transported to South Carolina and all along the East Coast came from many different origins. They created the Creole language to understand one another and kept their African cultures, which they defend jealously to this day. Gullah is a corruption of Gola, a cultural group from Sierra Leone, and Geechee is a corruption of Kissi, another group from Sierra Leone and Guinea. They call themselves the Gullah/Geechee Nation and have a chief who goes all over the world to promote their culture, their language which is dying out, and to defend their rights, because they are also losing their ancestral lands.
PT: The Ministry of Tourism understands the importance of the slave route as a product that can attract tourists to Guinea. The way that leaders of the department acted to help me obtain the site proves that. I will present the project in Guinea in October after my trip to South Carolina, and at that moment I will talk about the level of collaboration with the insitutions.
Paul Théa is a filmmaker, radio and TV presenter, and communications specialist. He studied Economic and Social Administration at the University of Montpelier, France; IT Administration at Toulouse's Institut de Promotion Commerciale; and TV and Radio in the US. Théa's films can also be found on his YouTube channel.