The hijacking of the U.S. shipping vessel Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates in April 2009 struck many people as anachronistic: How could there still be pirates in the 21st century? Back then, more Americans were concerned with media piracy, people sneaking into theaters with cameras and selling bootleg copies of blockbusters like . . . Pirates of the Caribbean. Cable news stations went to town on the Maersk Alabama story and were rewarded with a slam-bang ending: on April 12, U.S. Navy Seal snipers killed three pirates in a lifeboat as one pirate aimed an AK-47 at their hostage, Captain Richard Phillips. The exotic tale soon disappeared from the headlines, but Stolen Seas—a 2012 documentary by University of Chicago alumnus Thymaya Payne, which opens Friday for a weeklong run at Facets Cinematheque—digs deep into the subject of piracy, arguing that it’s less an anachronism than a sign of the times.
At the same time, a faltering world response to the failed state of Somalia has created what Howden, interviewed for the movie, calls “a laboratory” for chaos. Since civil war broke out in 1991, the country has splintered into ten tribal areas barely held together by the administrative apparatus in the north, once the site of the communist government. Africa historian Richard Dowden notes Somalia’s warlike character and recent history as a Cold War chess piece: “Both America and the Soviet Union filled it with weapons.” Drought, joblessness, and economic distress are the last ingredients, and this is where Payne’s contacts on the ground pay off. “Every girl is looking for a pirate,” explains Ali, asserting that the macho element attracts them as much as the money. Payne also interviews Ibrahim, a 17-year-old pirate with a wife, a child, and a gangsta mentality. “The situation now,” he declares, “is how to make my life brief.”
Directed by Thymaya Payne
