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prison films
3000 YEARS AND LIFE - A film by Randall Conrad. Color, 45 minutes. Distributed in 16mm by Odeon Films (1619 Broadway, NY, NY 10019).
WITH INTENT TO HARM - A film by Stephen Ujlaki and Scott Siegler. Color, 28 minutes. Distributed in 16mm by Odeon Films and Eccentric Circle Cinema Workshop (Box 1481, Evanston, IL 60204).
ATTICA - Produced, directed and edited by Cinda Firestone; cinematography by Roland Barnes, Jay Lamarche, Mary Lampson, Jesse Goodman, Carol Stein and Kevin Keating; Assistant Director and Editor - Tucker Ashworth. Color and b/w, 85 minutes. Distributed in 16mm by Tricontinental Film Center (333 Sixth Ave., NY, NY 10014).
TEACH OUR CHILDREN - Produced by Third World Newsreel. B/W, 35 minutes. Distributed in 16mm by Third World Newsreel (26 W. 20th St., NY, NY 10011).
FRAME-UP: THE IMPRISONMENT OF MARTIN SOSTRE - A film by the Pacific Street FUm Collective. Color, 30 minutes. Distributed in 16mm by Pacific St. Film Collective (280 Clinton St., Brooklyn, NY 11201).
Three years after the uprising at Attica, the trials of some of the inmates involved have begun in Buffalo with almost no national coverage, while in Washington, D.C., the governor who sanctioned the massacre is about to be approved as the new Vice-President of the United States. Time, in short, has served to blunt rather than to sharpen the issues raised at Attica. The prison movement, like most of the radical movement during this period, has floundered and lacks an activist mass base beyond the walls.
In the years since Attica, a number of independent film-makers have put their skills into the desperate struggle to gain a wider audience for the prisoner movement. Unfortunately, a number of built-in problems about prisons and inmates have been largely ignored or brushed over in most of the films produced. Among these problems is the self-evident fact that prisons are not designed to be pleasant experiences, and that the general public does not expect them to be other than miserable places of confinement. If anything, the average person has been led to believe that prisons are 'too soft' and that prisoners are 'coddled.' This places the burden on the film-maker of exposing just how vile the prison system is and showing the difference...