While many men were embarrassed and several tried to run away, a disturbing number became violent, chasing her and/or physically assaulting her. Some 30 men tried to grab the microphone out of her hand; six or seven tried to knock the camera away. One man smashed the camera into her head, while another punched her in the side of the head with his fists. "When I am by myself and I experience street abuse, I don't feel calm," she remarks. "I feel anxious, angry and frustrated. But when I was doing the film, I had a camera in my hand and I was gathering information, so these people were no longer my antagonists. It was actually very easy for me to flip-flop my feelings and ask them, 'Do you mind if I interview you?'"
Getting footage of the actual act of harassment wasn't easy, however, since it was nearly impossible to anticipate who might make a lecherous gesture or remark. "The hardest thing to do is to get the actual gestures," concurs Hi-8 cameraman Todd Liebler. On more than one occasion he was positioned across the street, shooting tight as Hadleigh-West walked down the opposite sidewalk past men sitting on a stoop. "I would focus on the men [in close-up] as Maggie walked through frame. Eileen, who was a few feet behind her, would cover her wide. I'd see the men in relative close-up from across the street, and I could see them mouthing the words. I'd be dead on these guys."
Liebler and Schreiber devised a plan for covering the action: one of them would always be wide and the other tight. As soon as Hadleigh-West turned on her camera and moved in on a man, however, the two operators would also move in. The action that each covered was based on where they were was standing. According to Schreiber, the responsibilities changed constantly; she and Liebler relied upon eye signals.
Hadleigh-West notes that she wanted at least one of her camera operators to be female. "It was important to me to have a female shooter, because street abuse is so subtle. It's the kind of thing men aren't particularly familiar with, so I wanted another woman's perspective. She would be able to see it more readily than a man." As it turned out, men on the street also frequently harassed Schreiber.
The most harrowing passage in War Zone — and, ironically but very intentionally, one of the most visually beautiful — is a sequence during which the viewer listens to the voice of a terror-stricken woman making a 911 phone call as a man breaks into her house and rapes her.
The call is real, but the viewer never sees the woman. Instead, the scene opens on a street during a thunderstorm; rain pours down as people scurry to find shelter. The only sound is the rain and thunder. As the 911 call comes in, the camera tilts so that only the surface of the street can be seen. A bright, flashing red light is reflected on the wet pavement. "The [blinking] light on the ground represents the beating of the woman's heart as she goes through this terrifying experience," says Hadleigh-West. "And then, when she utters a bloodcurdling scream, the light is gone, as if her life has been extinguished."
The image was achieved by superimposing two separate versions of the same shot: a black-and-white Hi-8 view of the street and a corresponding color rendition. "I wanted the drama of black-and-white, but we also wanted that burst of color," continues Hadleigh-West. "Luckily, the scene we took of the light blinking over and over again was very gray. We laid one image over the other on the Avid, placing the color image in the background and the black-and-white image on top of it, and just let the color seep through."
Even in its most subtle forms, street abuse can be an unnerving experience for a woman. The problem has received scant attention in the media, and Hadleigh-West hopes that her film will help to raise awareness. She has been heartened by the reaction from men who have seen her film. "I don't think the majority of men realize the climate of aggression that women live in," she offers. "They don't really want to make us feel bad about ourselves or to feel unsafe. They have just never had to think about it."
