The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

Released:
2016
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Runtime:
87:00
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Distributed by:
Grasshopper Film
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The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is a non-fiction film about the prison from the places we least expect to find it: the front yards, public spaces, and social rituals of everyday life.

A meditation on the prison and its geographic disappearance in the era of mass incarceration, the film unfolds as a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the United States where prisons do work and affect lives: an anti-sex offender pocket park in Los Angeles, a congregation of ex-incarcerated chess players shut out of the formal labor market, the overnight buses that carry visitors to far away prisons, an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs, and a host of other unexpected spaces.

In this teaser we journey from Kentucky to Detroit to New York and back again, beginning with the voices of loved ones sending messages through a call-in radio show deep in the mountains of Kentucky.