Exceptional People’s Olympiad

(Canada, 2000, 15min, Big House Productions/CBC)

This film was shot and produced by a film production group inside Collins Bay Federal Jail near Kingston. This film highlights the annual weekend Olympics for athletes with disabilities organized and paid for by prisoners at Collins Bay. This film highlights some of the relationships that have developed over the course of this event. An interesting snap-shot of two communities so often made invisible by our society.

Prison Lullabies

(USA, 2003, 83min, Brown Hats Productions)

Dirs: Odile Isralson, Lina Matta

Prison Lullabies is the remarkable portrait of four women living on the bad side of luck, struggling with drug addiction, arrested for dealing and prostitution, and serving prison time with one common bond - arrested pregnant, Amy, Monique, Joann, and Anne Marie have all given birth behind bars. One of only five prisons in the U.S. to provide a nursery program for inmates, Taconic Correctional Facility in New York State allows the women to keep their babies for the first 18 months of their lives while insisting that the mothers participate in a rigorous series of classes that range from basic child care to anger management and drug counseling. Each woman is released in the course of filming. Each must choose, minute to minute, whether to find a job, break the cycle of relapse and re-arrest that has led to the loss of her other children, or pick up the crack pipe, abandon the child, and return to the streets. Shot in cinema-verité style, Prison Lullabies addresses these issues by allowing the audience the opportunity to observe and listen as the stories of the inmate mothers unfold in their own time and in their own words. Prison Lullabies is an extraordinary tale - that of four women making life-altering choices and seizing the glimmer of possibility the prison nursery program is holding out for them and for the future of their children.

Q & A with

Ayden Scheim, prison activist
Psychiatric survivor, OCAB Speakers Bureau

"LYRICIST LINKUP 6: Poetik Justice"

Presented by 8 Rooks Enlightenment & I.S.I.S. CIRCLE ENTERTAINMENT

Ryerson University Multi-Purpose Room (Student Campus Centre), 55 Gould St.

Hosted by Soul-R & EvE! Featuring Spin, Lady Loxx, Leviathan, Jah Paul & Elisha, Blak Child, EvE, Soul-R and El Machetero

Open-Mic! Cultural Catering! Vendor's Market!

Sponsors: Ryerson Students' Union, Big It Up International, Lite It Up
Candles, Dogon Star Productions
Music: DJ El Machetero
Contact: 8Rooks.Com

An opportunity to share information about what various individuals and groups are currently doing in the area of prisoners’ justice activism - both for new folks who want to get involved, and for folks who are already involved but want to build stronger connections. Come and identify networking /collective support needs for prisoner’s justice activists and to brainstorm ideas for keeping each better connected. Explore the possibility of forming a radical prison workers network and discuss ideas around organizing a prisoner’s justice week and/or other actions which will help build collective solidarity in the prison abolition movement.

Juvies

(USA, 2004, 66 min, Chance Films Inc.)

Dirs: Leslie Neale

From award-winning documentary filmmaker Leslie Neale (Road to Return) comes this riveting look at a world most of us will never see: the world of juvenile offenders who are serving incredible prison sentences for crimes they either did not commit or were only marginally involved in. For two years, Neale taught a video production class at Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall to 12 young people who were all being tried as adults. Juvies is the product of that class, which was a learning experience for both students and teacher - and becomes a learning experience for all of us, as we witness the heartbreaking stories of children abandoned by families and a system that has disintegrated into a kind of vending machine justice. Narrated by actor Mark Wahlberg, himself a former juvenile offender, and poetry read by Mos Def.

Sun Up ‘till Sun Down

(USA, 2005, 22 min, Prison Moratorium Project)

Dir. Tania Cuevas

A lively documentary produced by the Prison Moratorium Project about their campaign against the construction of youth prisons and the growing movement in New York to end imprisonment. Imaginative techniques of conveying the startling reality of the prison industry make this film engaging as well as informative.

Performances by

Spin, spoken word artist, community organizer
Toronto Underground Street Journalist Mr. Bones

Q&A with

Veronica Salvatierra, Community Youth Worker, St Stephen’s Community House
Lee Ann Chapman, B.A. LL.B, staff lawyer at Justice for Children and Youth.
Jagjeet Chhabra, 81 Reasons Campaign Representative, Black Youth Taking Action

Women in Death Castles

(Palestine, 2004,13min)

Dir: Balata Film Collective

A high proportion of Palestinian women prisoners in Israeli Occupation prisons are from the Nablus region. In this film, recently released women from Balata and Nablus speak out about their pain and struggle while imprisoned. Testimonies describe interrogation, physical and mental torture, loneliness. The film Includes interviews with ex-prisoners, children of current prisoners and officials from the Prisoners’ Society.

Red Names

(Canada,1999, 12min)

Dirs: Amin Zarghami, Shahrzad Arshadi

This is a short video celebrating the legacy of thousands of women who lost their lives in Iran between 1979 and 1999 due to their political, social and religious beliefs. For Amin Zarghami & Shahrzad Arshadi, working on this video was an opportunity to pay tribute to the memory of these women - some of whom they knew personally - and grieve their loss. It is intended as a testament both to their suffering and to the political tyranny that led to their execution.

Women in Struggle

(Palestine, 2004, 56min)

Dir: Buthina Canaan Khoury

This film documents the lives of Palestinian women who are ex-political detainees, depicting their struggle during years of imprisonment in Israeli jails and exploring the effect on their present-day life. The film focuses on the lives of four women who became involved in the Palestinian national struggle for independence. The women testify in their own words about their histories, and about daily life in the current Palestinian Intifada at a time of the "war on terror" and the apartheid wall. The film seeks to understand the women’s efforts to preserve their dignity and integrate into Palestinian social and political life. Although these four women are no longer physically incarcerated, they actually find themselves in a bigger prison carrying their imprisonment within them in every aspect of their life.

Q&A with

Shahrzad Mojab, Director, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto
Shahrzad Arshadi, filmmaker Rafeef Ziadeh, Sumoud

Performance by

Faith Nolan, singer-songwriter, blues guitarist and prison activist www.faithnolan.org

Mission Against Terror

(Cuba/Ireland, 2004, 48 min, Canal Education and Two Islands Productions)

Dirs: Bernie Dwyer, Roberto Ruiz Rebo

As Havana wakes up to another day, five Cuban men are serving their time in prisons scattered throughout the United States. Their crime? Protecting their country and people against terrorism. Arrested on Sept. 12, 1998 and subjected to a trial, which US civil rights lawyer, Leonard Weinglass, calls a "violation" from start to finish, the Cuban five were locked away for a total of three life sentences plus 68 years. There are very few cases that are political by their nature. This was one. "Mission Against Terror" charts Cuba's 45-year struggle against terrorism and the five men's fight to win justice.

Souha Surviving Hell

(Lebanon, 2001, 60min)

Dir: Randa Chahal Sabbag

From the director of Civilisees, which opened the 2000 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and received its Nestor Almendros Prize, Randa Chahal Sabbag now turns her lens on South Lebanon. The subject of Chahal Sabbag's film is the charismatic Souha Becharre, whom many call the "fiance du Liban." In 1989 at the age of twenty-one, Souha - a devoted communist - agreed to attempt the assassination of Lebanese General Antoine Lahad, who was collaborating with the Israeli Army in the South of Lebanon. Lahad survived, but Souha was quickly arrested and thrown in the Khiam prison where she spent ten years for the attempt on Lahad's life. Conditions in Khiam were horrific, and Souha endured six of those years in solitary confinement. Chahal Sabbag follows Souha in the months following her release, as she tirelessly travels Lebanon - speaking about her experiences at Khiam and searching out others who were imprisoned there. And despite all she suffered in Khiam, Souha is a survivor who shares her story with a sense of hope for the future - both her own and that of Lebanon.

Q&A with

Representative from Sumoud Political Prisoners Solidarity Group.
Tom Keefer - Seth Hayes Support Committee, Autonomy & Solidarity Morteza Gorgzadeh, Toronto Forum on Cuba
Patrick Elie, Former Secretary of State for National Defense, Haiti, President of Foundation Eko Vwa Jan Dominique

Rising Up: the Alams

(USA, 2005, 12min)

Dir: Konrad Aderer

An immigrant family, the Alams, are picked up during the special registration program in the United States after 911. Faced with removal to persecution they decided to resist with the revolutionary organization - Desis Rising Up and Moving, a South Asian working class organization.

Don't Ask Don't Tell

(Canada, 2005, 11min)

Dirs: Jean McDonald and Alex Rotalski

Approximately 200,000 non-status immigrants who live in Canada face deportation and detention. Women abused by the spouse cannot call police, lesbian couples are refused community housing. In Toronto immigrant communities are fighting back. This film documents their struggle.

Whose Rights, Anyway? Justice for Mohammed

(Canada, 2005, 23 min)

Dir: Anice Wong

Provides public information about the security-certificates process by highlighting the case of Mohamed Harkat who has been in detention in Ottawa for over 18 months.

L'echo du Silence (Echo Of Silence)

(Canada, 2003, 23 min)

Dir: Chloe Germain-Therien

In 1997 two Basque men, Gorka Perea and Eduardo Plagaro, sought refugee status in Canada after being charged with arson in Spain. They claimed that their confessions to the crime were signed under torture. In 2001 the two men were detained as suspected terrorists in a prison in Rivière des Prairies, Quebec. The Echo of Silence documents their experience in Canada: their detention, their temporary release, and finally their extradition in June 2005, despite an active grassroots movement to keep them in Canada.

Q&A with

Chloe Germain-Therien, film-maker
Mac Scott - No One is Illegal
Sima Zerehi - Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Matthew Behrens - Toronto Action for Social Change
Family members - Friends and Family of Gary Freeman

Torture Inc - America’s Brutal Prisons

(UK, 2005, 24 min)

Dir: Deborah Davies

Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq? They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for the UK’s Channel 4. It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

This Black Soil - A Story of Resistance and Rebirth

(USA, 2004, 58 min, Working Hands Productions)

Dir: Teresa Konechne

This inspiring and provocative new 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, a 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. Under the leadership of visionary women, this new rural village challenges all conventional ideas of community development and includes not only improved and affordable housing, but a sustainable economic base to earn a living wage, a community center for educating its residents, a daycare center, laundromat, and a community farm, which not only provides jobs and income for the organization, but returns them to their roots, working on the land.

Q&A with

Julia Sudbury, Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Equity and Diversity, University of Toronto
Rai Reece, PJAC
Giselle Dias

The Heart Has Its Own Memory

(Canada, 2005, 13 minutes)

Dir: Audrey Huntley

This short film looks at violence against First Nations Women in Canada, the lack of justice for missing Aboriginal women and racist police inaction and impunity. Huntley creates a collage of the women’s stories featuring interviews with family members and friends. The film plays with native oratory and is a testimony to the pain and grief of the community as a whole and a message of no more silence.

To Heal The Spirit

(Canada, 1991, 47 min)

Why Not Productions Inc.

An emotionally charged documentary that focuses on First Nations women in prison and the way in which many women discover spirituality and gain a sense of identity within the oppressive confines of prison walls.

My Name is Kahentiiosta (Canada, 1995, 30 min)

Dir: Alanis Obomsawin

This affecting film profiles a young, courageous Kahnawake Mohawk woman who was arrested after a 78 day armed standoff in 1990 between the Mohawks and the Canadian federal government. Kahentiiosta is detained four days longer than other women because the court refuses to accept her aboriginal name. This is a compelling look at a people’s movement for self-determination and one young woman’s refusal to capitulate in the face of great adversity.

Q&A with

Jonathan Rudin, Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto
Chief Leo Friday, Kashechewan First Nations
Amber O'Hara (Waabnong Kwe), Two spirited Cherokee/Ojibway Grandmother

CKLN 88.1fm
Criminology Department, University of Toronto
Defense for Children International, Canada
Equity Studies Department, University of Toronto
Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto
John Howard Society Toronto
Ontario Public Interest Research Group, York University
Prisoner's HIV/AIDS Support Action Network
Sexual Diversity Studies Program, University of Toronto
Social Justice Cluster, University of Toronto
Toronto Forum on Cuba
Trans Identified/Woman Identified Caucus, CUPE 3903, York University
Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto
Women Political Prisoners of the Middle East Project (Shahrzad Mojab)

81 Reasons Campaign
8Rook Productions
Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto
Al-Awda Right of Return Coalition (Toronto)
BIFA, Bath Penitentiary
Black Action Defense Committee
Black Inmates and Friends Assembly
Buried Alive Illustrations
Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada
Coalition to Stop the War Toronto
Colours of Resistance - York University
Friends and Family Gary Freeman
Gavel Club, Bath Penitentiary
Isis Entertainment
Justice for Children and Youth
Justice for Mohamed Harkat Committee
Lifers Group, Bath Penitentiary
Lifers Group, Joyceville Penitentiary
Lifting as We Climb
Native Brotherhood, Bath Penitentiary
No One Is Illegal
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Prison Talk Online
Resistance on the Sound Dial
Rittenhouse
Satan Macnuggit
St. Clare's Multifaith Housing Society
Strength in SISterhood
Sumoud
Toronto Action for Social Change
Toronto Don't Ask Don't Tell Campaign
Womyn4justice - Kingston
Words Action Resistance