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Videos
"A Sentence of Their Own" (2001)
By Edgar A. Barens. 64 minutes. Chronicles one familys annual pilgrimage to a New Hampshire State Prison and reveals the damaging impact incarceration has on families.
www.asentenceoftheirown.com
Beyond Conviction
"Beyond Conviction" tells the moving story of
three crime victims on a journey toward healing and
resolution. The film follows participants in a
pioneering program run by the state of Pennsylvania
in which victims of the most violent crimes meet
face-to-face with their perpetrators. Beyond
Conviction provides a rare glimpse into the
lingering pain, questions and regrets for both
victims and perpetrators and reveals the bold and
difficult path to redemption and reconciliation.
http://beyondconviction.com/index.htm
Corrections (2000)
By Ashley Hunt. 58 minutes. The story of justice turned to profit.
http://www.independentfilms.com
Girlhood
Girlhood tells two coming-of-age stories
from the real America: Shanae, ten years old when she
was gang-raped by five boys, responded by drinking
and drugging, and then graduated to murder, with the
stabbing death of a friend, at age 11. Megan, whose
mother abandoned her to turn tricks to support her
ravaging heroin addiction, ran away from ten
different foster homes before being arrested for
attacking another foster child with a box cutter.
Both girls ended up in the Waxter Juvenile Facility,
home to Maryland's most violent juvenile offenders.
It is here that their journeys really begin. Produced
and Directed by Liz Garbus. Produced by Rory Kennedy.
http://www.moxiefirecracker.com/films/girlhood.php
Hard Road Home
Odds are that if you go to prison and are lucky
enough to get out, you’ll be going back sometime
soon. Julio Medina, however, beat the odds. A
drug-dealing gang leader when he entered prison,
Julio left 12 years later a changed man. He created
Exodus Transitional Community, a program in Harlem
dedicated to breaking the cycle of incarceration that
ensnares so many. The trick to Exodus is that its
staff knows firsthand what it’s like to go to jail.
They’re all ex-cons – the baddest group of do-gooders
around, who reach out to their clients like nobody
else can. HARD ROAD HOME tells the story of this
high–risk, high-drama world and the extraordinary
task of turning around the fate of any person born
into it. A GreenHouse Pictures film. Directed by
Macky Alston, 2007.
http://www.hardroadhome.org/
How Do You Spell Murder?
Chronicles a year in the life of a group of men who are illiterate and incarcerated in New Jersey. It explores the powerful connection between illiteracy and crime. The film profiles several of student-tutor teams working together. The prisoners recount years of humiliation in the public school system, where they were either held back repeatedly or promoted without adequate preparation. Many have undiagnosed learning disorders. Almost all are dropouts. Their years of frustration and anger were brought to unyielding conclusions at criminal trials where they could barely grasp the legal documents and procedures that determined their fates. The film profiles one such student-tutor team from their first session through to a year later when the student can read. Inmate tutor Sammy recounts that he was functionally illiterate when he entered prison. While in prison he taught himself to read and is now a poet as well as a tutor.
http://www.howdoyouspellmurder.com
Juvies
Juvies is an intimate and harrowing look at the
turbulent journeys of three young men in and out of
Baltimore's Juvenile Justice System. In an approach
similar to The Farm, the filmmakers obtained
unprecedented access to a world generally closed to
the outside. With unique candor and raw emotional
drama, the film draws the viewer inside the harsh and
unforgiving world of juvenile detention centers and
prisons. Set primarily in Maryland's Cheltenham Youth
Facility -- originally known as The Center for
Reformation for Colored Boys -- the film explores the
events that propel these troubled young men into the
system, their experiences through court, commitment,
rehabilitation and release, and the challenges they
face when they return to their communities. Directed
and produced by Liz Garbus. Produced by Rory Kennedy
and Jesse Moss. 2000.
http://www.moxiefirecracker.com/films/juvies.php
Killer Poet
Killer Poet tells the story of Norman
Porter, a convicted double murderer from
Massachusetts who served 25 years in prison before
escaping to Chicago. There he spent the next two
decades living as a poet/intellectual by the name of
JJ Jameson - an elaborately crafted false identity -
until he was apprehended in 2005, thanks to a
relentless police investigation and a compromising
trail left by his audacious personna. He had just
been named Chicago's "Poet of the Month" when the law
finally caught up with him.
Throughout his prison years, Porter had transformed
himself in the eyes of authorities from a convicted
killer to a trusted prison leader at the heart of the
prison reform movement. Today, Porter is back in a
maximum-security penitentiary and will likely die
behind bars.
To trace the story, the film interweaves varying
perspectives on an elusive and enigmatic persona,
from the eccentric characters living in the heart of
Chicago's beatnik-artist community, to the victims'
embittered families in Boston and the vigilant
officers of the Violent Fugitive Apprehesion Unit and
their twenty year hunt for a killer.
http://killerpoetfilm.com/
http://www.friends-of-norman-a-porter.org
Life Sentence
A personal look at the impact of long-term
imprisonment and the adjustment back into society.
While providing positive opportunities for other
formerly incarcerated people, these six successful
men and women must deal with the hindrances of
lifetime parole. The film explores the criminal
justice system, as well as the hope, ambition, and
obstacles they've overcome to prove change is
possible. Personal Stories: Mika'il DeVeaux, Mark
Graham, Anthony Papa, Sheryl Sohn, William Eric
Waters, Sharon White. Also Including: Jeffrion Aubry
(New York State Assemblyman), Robert Dennison (Former
Chairman NY State Division of Parole), Marc Mauer
(Executive Director, The Sentencing Project),
Director/Producer: Lisa Gray
http://lifesentencethemovie.com/
Prison Town, USA
In the 1990s, at the height of the prison-building
boom, a prison opened in rural America every 15 days.
"Prison Town, USA" tells the story of Susanville, one
California town that tries to resuscitate its economy by
building a prison - with unforeseen consequences.
Weaving the stories of a laid-off mill worker turned
guard, a struggling dairy owner and an inmate's family
stranded in Susanville, the film illuminates the legacy
of an industry that is transforming rural America.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/prisontown
Red Hook Justice
Imagine a court that works for change instead of punishment. A film by Meema Spadola. 60 minutes. From the http://www.reentrymediaoutreach.org">Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign, which offers media resources that will facilitate community discussion and decision making about solution-based reentry programs. A list of documentaries and media resources is available by visiting their website.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/redhookjustice/film.html
This Black Soil: A Story of Resistance and Rebirth (2004)
Directed by Teresa Konechne and produced by Working Hands Productions. This film chronicles the successful struggle of Bayview, Virginia, a small and severely impoverished rural African-American community, to pursue a new vision of prosperity. Catalyzed by the defeat of a state plan to build a maximum-security prison in their backyard, the powerful women leaders and residents created the Bayview Citizens for Social Justice non-profit organization, secured $10 million in grants, purchased the proposed prison site land and are now building a new community from the ground up.
www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/this.html
Troop 1500
Follows five young Girl Scouts - sisters Caitlin and Mikaela, Jasmine, Jessica and Naomi - whose mothers are serving time.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/troop1500/film.html
Up the Ridge
"Up the Ridge" is a documentary produced by Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby.
In 1999, Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ's for the Appalachian region's
only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of
letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge State Prison, the
newest prison built to prop up the region's sagging coal economy. The
letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff
and inmates. Filming began that year and, through the lens of Wallens Ridge,
the film offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison
industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city
minority offenders to distant rural outposts. Up the Ridge explores
competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights
violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial
and cultural conflict with tragic consequences.
http://www.appalshop.org/h2h/film/screenings.htm
the | visitors
the | visitors, by Melis Birder, is a feature-length documentary
about passengers of a charter bus
that leaves New York City every weekend for various
prisons located in Upstate New York. Reflecting the
struggles of a unique culture living at the
intersection of confinement and the free world, the
story follows the coordinator of the bus, Denise,
whose husband is coming home soon after 17 years of
imprisonment. This film is a powerful testament to love, life, and commitment.
http://www.visitorsdocumentary.com/menu1.htm
Voices in Time
36 minutes. A window into the lives of women who have served time in prison. In emotionally charged interviews, women share their experiences before, in and after prison and examine the relationship between the prison system and poor communities and communities of color.
www.beyondmedia.org
What I Want My Words to Do to You (2003)
This program goes inside a writing workshop led by playwright Eve Ensler, consisting of 15 women inmates of New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, most of whom were convicted of murder. The women delve into and expose the most terrifying places in themselves, as they grapple with the nature of their crimes and their own culpability. The film culminates in an emotionally charged prison performance of the women's writing.
PBS Videos Link
What We Leave Behind (2000)
Produced by Visible Voices and Womens International Information Project. 20 minutes. A video made by formerly incarcerated women that challenges stereotypes about women in prison and examines the impact of their incarceration on their children.
http://www.beyondmedia.org
Yes In My Back Yard (1999)
By Tracy Huling. 57 minutes. Examines rural dependence on prisons and probes the impact on the keepers and the kept.
E-mail galgirls@francomm.com
For a more extensive guide to videos go to: http://www.360degrees.org
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