- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
The island of St. Helena is known primarily for two things:
it's where Napoleon Bonaparte spent his last years
and is buried,
and more recently, it's a place containing a terrible secret.
A mass grave with the remains of thousands of Africans.
That is tonight's film, A Story of Bones.
The film focuses on Annina Van Neel,
who is a construction environmental officer
from Namibia.
She went to St. Helena charged with overseeing the building
of a 350-million-dollar commercial airport
on the island.
The airport was needed to accommodate
a growing tourism industry
due in part to Napoleon's grave site.
Van Neel liked her work and was looking forward to the project.
Always up for an adventure, she ended up with an adventure.
But it was not at all what she was expecting,
and her life soon became
one of purpose that she never anticipated.
During the construction of the airport,
Van Neel was present when the bones
of some 9,000 African men, women, and children
were discovered.
They were supposed to be freed slaves,
but Van Neel would learn that that was not the case.
In 1807, despite outlying the slave trade,
Britain started intercepting slave ships
from other countries.
The Africans aboard these ships in theory were free,
but as Van Neel would learn,
the people were not returned to Africa.
They were instead sent to St. Helena
and made to work on plantations.
In addition to this injustice,
just seeing the hastily crafted mass grave of 9,000 people
gave Van Neel a new purpose:
to give these people a proper burial
and make their history part of the Island's history.
The film follows Van Neel as she forms an alliance
with preservationist Peggy King Jorde
and a group of marginalized islanders,
to find a sense of community and purpose together.
They fight to memorialize these forgotten victims.
A Story of Bones
is directed by Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere.
This is their first film ever for both of them.
The duo said they were compelled to tell this vital story,
that was in urgent need of a spotlight and POV agreed.
A Story of Bones starts now
on PBS Wisconsin, your home for independent film.