A Film is Born Behind Bars

I recently came across a captivating short film made by eight young men in an unlikely location -- New York's Westchester County jail. The film, called Judgement, was made during a 12-week class at the jail as part of an education project run by the Jacob Burns Film Center, sponsored by the Elias Foundation. I'm a fan of new media education programs inside jails and prisons even when they don't produce work of such startling quality, but this film is something special.

The eight-minute short explores attitudes inside and outside the criminal justice system, particularly the judgments we project on each other before we've ever met. Without frills, it manages a stark, captivating look and feel. The prisoners who made the film sit for interviews in their orange uniforms and expound with insight on the lives -- and societal forces -- that led them to jail.

“We wanted to give these young men an opportunity to use their personal experiences to create something lasting and positive,’’ says Westchester County Executive Andy Spano, who helped start the program. "They learned a new skill and expressed themselves in a way they never had before -– something we hope will help them in the future.”

If we had more programs like this across the country, we'd simultaneously enjoy a shrinking prison population and a new surge of powerful storytelling. Watch the full film here:

Hat tip to Reclaiming Futures, where I first came across this film.