ASHEVILLE, March 06, 2007 - Southern Circuit’s presentation of Steven Ross’ films “Liberia: A Fragile Peace” and “Fishers of Dar” will be 7 p.m. Monday at the Fine Arts Theatre.

“Liberia: A Fragile Peace” explores the civil war between the wealthy minority of former American slaves and the indigenous, rural tribes across the country. Ross calls it a “happy accident” that he met the graduate student who wanted to make a documentary about the Liberia situation and needed help with the filmmaking.

Ross first visited Liberia after the exit of a tyrannical Charles Taylor and the entrance of the United Nations in 2003. He and his student colleague had only one contact in the whole country, stayed in a convent (because the only hotel in Monrovia was charging $350 a night) and “filled a bag with footage,” Ross said.

They went back again a few years later. “I wasn’t there during the carnage,” he said. “I was never fearful for my life. The people saw my camera and wanted to talk. They needed to tell the world their story.”

“Fishers of Dar” addresses issues around development in the Third World and the idea of modernizing traditional markets. The film won Best Documentary at the Athens International Film/Video Festival (2003) and Best Cinematography at the Ann Arbor Film Festival (2002).

Ross has been both a professional cinematographer and associate film professor at the Ohio University School of Film for a decade. He is now working on a documentary about a Viking-age archaeological dig in the Mosfell Valley outside of Reykjavik, Iceland.

Southern Circuit is a program of the Southern Arts Federation, a not-for-profit regional arts organization. Southern Arts Federation is supported by funding and programming partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts, private foundations, corporations, individuals, and the state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.