THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES // A Brett Story Documentary

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

A Brett Story Documentary

Media Reaction 1

In her documentary, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, Canadian filmmaker, Brett Story (figure 1), focuses on the American prison system and gives candid depictions of those affected by the system, from both the inside and the outside. In the film, Story travels from Missouri, to Kentucky, to California to listen to these stories. A main focus of the film, Story explains, was to “make links in this film, however oblique, between these issues: policing, incarceration, housing policy, tax policy. Again, to upend the idea of the prison system as just a closed system that has nothing to do with other aspects of daily life”. The film touches on inequality, comments heavily on race, and highlights some of the injustices within the system that reinforce the systems skewed racial proportions. Beyond her film being and investigation of Americas prisons system, story focuses not on the inmates themselves, but those who are affected by a relative or loved one’s imprisonment, or those who have been released from prison and their struggles having a record.

Figure 1; Director and Filmmaker, Brett Story

Story explored individuals ranging from white small-town worker’s, hopeful for a prison in their town to stimulate jobs and economic (figure 2), to female inmate firefighters that can’t get jobs as real firefighter after prison because of their record, to previous inmates that have mastered the art of chess (figure 3). As a result, Story’s interviewees show a wide range of those affected by the prison industrial complex.

Figure 2

Figure 3

The film concludes with two workers talking outside a shop, discussing how the prisons call system keeps them constantly paying for more so they can contact their loved ones in prison. The one girl concludes, ‘when it comes down to it, its all about money’. These were the last words voiced in the film and a final conclusion about the institution of the prison industrial complex in the U.S.

In an article with Vice, Story talks about one of her subjects that says in the film, “’This might shock you as Canadians, but you can kill a nigger anytime you feel like it, here in America’.... My editor and I almost took that line out, only because we didn't feel comfortable foregrounding the Canadian thing, but what he says is too powerful and important. That needed to be said”. This part of the film struck me instantly and I agree that the comment needed to be voiced in the film.

One consideration of viewing the film would be, is this film bias? Evaluating journalism biases, weather it is from the internet, or in the form of a documentary, can help us evaluate the lens through which the filmmaker or director may have made the film. In Story’s documentary, there is obvious bias. But this doesn’t necessarily connote the invalidity of what she illustrated. Story focuses on depicting the prison system through the lenses of multiple demographics and relations to the system. She gave perspectives of those who both supported, and had issues with the structure and practice of the system, attempting to give an even depiction, and as she explained, giving the audience the freedom to interpret what they will from the stories heard. There was no clear over all, end all conclusion of the film, instead Story pans down the road to the prison in Kentucky, flags wave slowly in the front, and the viewer is tasked with soaking in the entirety of the film and interpreting what they may.