Fantasy and fact come together in the Lola Arias’ Reas, which spins a musical drama out of the real experience of female and transgender former prisoners. It shares some DNA with the likes of Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar, which drew on workshops in Holloway and Hank Rogerson’s Shakespeare Behind Bars, but it is perhaps closest in spirit to Brian Hill’s Feltham Sings and Songbirds, which also brought prisoners’ experience to the screen through music, although Arias’ film is much less wedded to the documentary form.
The non-professional cast means this does feel rough around the edges but, on the other side of the equation, they bring a truthful energy to the screen.
Our guide to the world of Buenos Aires’ Casero prison is Yoseli, a young woman whose dreams of travelling were scuppered when she was caught drug trafficking at the airport. We encounter her as she is being strip searched and.
The non-professional cast means this does feel rough around the edges but, on the other side of the equation, they bring a truthful energy to the screen.
Our guide to the world of Buenos Aires’ Casero prison is Yoseli, a young woman whose dreams of travelling were scuppered when she was caught drug trafficking at the airport. We encounter her as she is being strip searched and.
- 2/18/2024
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Stars: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Daniel Kaluuya, Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Max Trujillo, Julio Cedillo, Hank Rogerson | Written by Taylor Sheridan | Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Canadian director Denis Villenueve follows up his 2013/14, critically acclaimed dark duo: Prisoners and Enemy with a film that delves into the growing schism between drug law enforcement in the USA and the political wants and needs at national government level.
Emily Blunt plays Kate Mercer – an idealistic, fast rising star in the FBI’s battle state side. After her most recent raid goes horribly and tragically wrong she’s called up to volunteer for a covert mission to apprehend the people directly responsible for the colleagues she’s lost. During her interview for this new role the questions – led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) a sandal wearing hippy spook with a glock – are oblique and the details of the...
Canadian director Denis Villenueve follows up his 2013/14, critically acclaimed dark duo: Prisoners and Enemy with a film that delves into the growing schism between drug law enforcement in the USA and the political wants and needs at national government level.
Emily Blunt plays Kate Mercer – an idealistic, fast rising star in the FBI’s battle state side. After her most recent raid goes horribly and tragically wrong she’s called up to volunteer for a covert mission to apprehend the people directly responsible for the colleagues she’s lost. During her interview for this new role the questions – led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) a sandal wearing hippy spook with a glock – are oblique and the details of the...
- 1/21/2016
- by Stuart Wright
- Nerdly
Shakespeare Behind Bars
PARK CITY -- The universality and humanity of Shakespeare's words have never been more evident than in Hank Rogerson's remarkable documentary "Shakespeare Behind Bars". Film follows a troupe of actor/prisoners for a year as they prepare a production of "The Tempest", a play which fittingly deals with forgiveness and redemption. Emotional honesty of the material should make doc a moving experience in theaters as well as on cable outlets.
Shakespeare has been a part of rehabilitation efforts at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky for seven years thanks to an enlightened warden who gives Rogerson and his crew surprisingly free reign for a maximum security prison. Inmates have two lives in the film--as actors and prisoners--and we get to follow them into their cells, mess hall and even into solitary confinement.
These are not just your garden variety criminals. Many of them have committed heinous crimes, everything from child molestation to murder. Curiously, Rogerson does not touch on how or why these prisoners were drawn to the program in the first place, but now that they're there, it's easy to see what it means to them. Acting gives them a chance to explore their inner life, and god knows they have plenty of baggage to bring to the process.
Directors always have to put up with unexpected developments, but that's nothing compared to what happens here. Volunteer director Curt Tofteland has to deal with actors dropping out when they are thrown in the hole for misbehaving. "This is Shakespeare behind bars," says one of the actors. "This is not Mary Poppins productions."
Rogerson style is not intrusive, he just sits back and observes and allows the inmates to reveal themselves in their own time. Eventually we get to hear their stories. Hall, who plays the lead Prospero, is a tortured soul who electrocuted his wife by tossing a hair dryer into the bath tub. Grappling to get at the meat of his character he says, "after 46 years of being in a tight clamp, I don't know how to unclamp."
There is something wonderful about watching these macho men struggling to find themselves in their characters. Big G, who plays the monster Caliban, is a burly guy doing time for killing a cop when he was 21. As he works folding wash in the Laundromat, he goes over his lines to himself.
Red, a diminutive black man, reluctantly takes the part of Miranda, a 15 year-old ingenue who doesn't know who her mother is. He is having trouble getting into the character until he realizes that he was the same age when he found out who his father was. It's both surprising and satisfying to see these men finding relevance in Shakespeare's words.
Just as Shakespeare did, Rogerson finds the humanity in his characters. While not mitigating their crimes, the film has the generosity of spirit to see the whole person. As several of the actors come up for parole and we root for them, the film poses tough questions about the nature of forgiveness.
Tofteland believes Shakespeare would have appreciated his motley crew of actors. "People in the theater back in Elizabethan times were thought of as pickpockets, thieves, rapists and murderers," he says. Cinematographer Shana Hagan's unfussy photography and James Wesley Stemple's lovely classical score help set the stage for Shakespeare, but it is these most unlikely actors who make it come alive.
SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS
A Philomath Films production in association with Independent Television Service and the BBC
Credits:
Director: Hank Rogerson
Writer: Rogerson
Producer: Jilann Spitzmiller
Director of photography: Shana Hagan
Music: James Wesley Stemple
Editor: Victor Livingston
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 92 minutes...
Shakespeare has been a part of rehabilitation efforts at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky for seven years thanks to an enlightened warden who gives Rogerson and his crew surprisingly free reign for a maximum security prison. Inmates have two lives in the film--as actors and prisoners--and we get to follow them into their cells, mess hall and even into solitary confinement.
These are not just your garden variety criminals. Many of them have committed heinous crimes, everything from child molestation to murder. Curiously, Rogerson does not touch on how or why these prisoners were drawn to the program in the first place, but now that they're there, it's easy to see what it means to them. Acting gives them a chance to explore their inner life, and god knows they have plenty of baggage to bring to the process.
Directors always have to put up with unexpected developments, but that's nothing compared to what happens here. Volunteer director Curt Tofteland has to deal with actors dropping out when they are thrown in the hole for misbehaving. "This is Shakespeare behind bars," says one of the actors. "This is not Mary Poppins productions."
Rogerson style is not intrusive, he just sits back and observes and allows the inmates to reveal themselves in their own time. Eventually we get to hear their stories. Hall, who plays the lead Prospero, is a tortured soul who electrocuted his wife by tossing a hair dryer into the bath tub. Grappling to get at the meat of his character he says, "after 46 years of being in a tight clamp, I don't know how to unclamp."
There is something wonderful about watching these macho men struggling to find themselves in their characters. Big G, who plays the monster Caliban, is a burly guy doing time for killing a cop when he was 21. As he works folding wash in the Laundromat, he goes over his lines to himself.
Red, a diminutive black man, reluctantly takes the part of Miranda, a 15 year-old ingenue who doesn't know who her mother is. He is having trouble getting into the character until he realizes that he was the same age when he found out who his father was. It's both surprising and satisfying to see these men finding relevance in Shakespeare's words.
Just as Shakespeare did, Rogerson finds the humanity in his characters. While not mitigating their crimes, the film has the generosity of spirit to see the whole person. As several of the actors come up for parole and we root for them, the film poses tough questions about the nature of forgiveness.
Tofteland believes Shakespeare would have appreciated his motley crew of actors. "People in the theater back in Elizabethan times were thought of as pickpockets, thieves, rapists and murderers," he says. Cinematographer Shana Hagan's unfussy photography and James Wesley Stemple's lovely classical score help set the stage for Shakespeare, but it is these most unlikely actors who make it come alive.
SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS
A Philomath Films production in association with Independent Television Service and the BBC
Credits:
Director: Hank Rogerson
Writer: Rogerson
Producer: Jilann Spitzmiller
Director of photography: Shana Hagan
Music: James Wesley Stemple
Editor: Victor Livingston
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 92 minutes...
- 2/1/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance selects composer lab
The Sundance Institute unveiled Tuesday the five documentary filmmakers and six music composers selected for its second Documentary Composers Lab, which runs this year Aug. 1-5. This year's fellows for the docu program include: Ra'ed Andoni, Mark Becker, Mercedes Moncada, Hank Rogerson, and Jilann Spitzmiller. Composing fellows are Peter Fitazpatrick, Aiko Fuskushima, Joseph Julian Gonzales, Gary Louris, Frank Macchia and Ras Mesinai. Said Diane Weyermann, director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund: "An original score is a powerful and effective element of a nonfiction film. This lab is an opportunity for documentary filmmakers to explore the power of music."...
- 7/28/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance selects 7 docu editing fellows
The Sundance Institute has announced the participants and details of the first documentary film editing and story laboratory, scheduled for June 20-25 at Park City, Utah. Seven fellows have been selected for the five-day program, which offers filmmakers the opportunity to collaborate with established and award-winning editors and directors as they work on the editing phase of their documentaries. The fellows are director Mercedes Moncada and editor Viviana Garcia-Berne for The Immortal, director Shiri Tsur and producer Avi Banon for On the Objection Front -- A Personal Journey, director-editor Mark Becker for Romantico and director Hank Rogerson and editor Victor Livingston for Shakespeare Behind Bars.
- 6/11/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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