We’ve been doing some research about health care in United States prisons and came across this fascinating New York Times article. Check it out.

In 1998 we premiered THE FARM at the Sundance Film Festival. I couldn’t even sit in the theater, but paced outside  on pure nerves, peeking in from time to time to feel the audience response.  Ninety minutes later the credits rolled, the applause began, the standing ovation and the energy it inspired were harbingers of good times ahead. Its success (we were Grand Jury Prize winners) shaped my career in ways I can never fully understand.

Last week, on June 3rd, over a decade later, I premiered THE FARM: TEN DOWN in Angola Prison.  The setting could not have been further removed from Park City, Utah.  Instead of a big screen in a theater, we were watching on a large size television monitor in the visiting room of the prison. Instead of filmmakers, film fanatics, media, festival directors, there were 400 inmates, guards and administrators.  Then beyond the visiting room the film was being broadcast on Angola’s closed circuit television station so the other 4500 men in the prison could also watch the film and the Q&A that was to follow.

This time I was a lot more nervous.

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NYU’s Global Affairs Graduate Society invites you to:

The Road To Redemption

A journey with former female child soldiers of the Liberian Civil War as they attempt recovery and rehabilitation in a post-conflict society.

Film Screening and Q&A with Emmy and Academy Award winning filmmaker Jonathan Stack

NYU’s Center for Global Affairs

15 Barclay St, Woolworth Building

Monday Oct 20th at 6:30 pm

Room TBA

RSVP to gags.nyu@gmail.com

Feel free to forward onto interested parties.

A HIGHEST COMMON DENOMINATOR PRODUCTIONLike so many in Liberia’s long and gruesome civil war, the true number will never be known, but it’s estimated that 30-40% of the combatants were women and girls. Illiteracy, chaos, and brutality prevented all but a few from partaking in UN-sponsored disarmament programs. These young women witnessed and participated in unspeakable violence, and were almost universally and brutally raped. How do societies and individuals heal the profound psychological wounds such acts inflict? Jonathan Stack’s intimate journey with them captures the courage and dignity with which these women seek their own path to forgiveness and redemption – to, in the words of one, "become a human being".

Producer and Director: Jonathan Stack

Co-Director: Susan Shea and Lila Place

Camera: Jonathan Stack

To further your journey go to www.hcdmediagroup.com International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2008

Director’s Biography

Jonathan Stack is a multiple Emmy Award winning and two- time Academy Award® nominated documentary filmmaker. During his career Jonathan has written, produced and directed over 25 films and 50 television programs including The Farm, which was honored as Sundance Film Festival’s 1998 Grand Jury Prize winner. He has distributed his films through HBO, BBC, Channel Four, Discovery Channel, A&E–among many others. While working as an independent filmmaker he earned a reputation for his unique ability to gain access into forbidden and even dangerous worlds. His exclusives include, President Charles Taylor’s farewell speech to the nation of Liberia (Liberia: An Uncivil War) and a rare interview with David Miscaivage, head of the Church of Scientology (Inside the Church of Scientology). In 2008 he produced Iron Ladies of Liberia, a film that tells the story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president. Over the years he has consistently found a way to explore difficult subject matter often in intractably dark circumstances and despair, transforming it into stories of hope and possibility that reflect his ultimate belief – that by telling positive stories one helps to create a more positive world.

We are thrilled to announce that our film, The Road to Redemption has been accepted into the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.