Of this year’s slate of Oscar-nominated films, only “Out of Sight,” “The Truman Show,” “One True Thing” and “Primary Colors” were released on video before the Academy Awards. Now that the gold statuettes have been distributed, look for several of the major nominees to arrive in stores.
“American History X” will be released in April, with “Saving Private Ryan” and “Elizabeth” scheduled for May.
The first postceremony video release, and one that probably will most benefit from its Oscar-night exposure, is “The Farm: Angola U.S.A.,” nominated for Best Documentary but losing to “The Last Days,” the Holocaust film Steven Spielberg executive produced.
“The Farm” has won a bumper crop of awards. It chronicles a year at Angola, Louisiana’s remote maximum-security penitentiary. Once a slave plantation, Angola houses 5,000 inmates, mostly black, none of whom are serving less than 15-year sentences. Eighty-five percent of those who enter never leave.
The film follows six hard cases, chosen, said Jonathan Stack, who co-directed the film with Liz Garbus, “to illuminate the big picture of life behind bars.”
George Crawford, 22, is a recent arrival whom we accompany through his dispiriting orientation. John Brown, 35, is a Death Row inmate. Vincent Simmons, 45, serving a 100-year sentence for two rapes, holds out hope that a parole board will hear new evidence he has uncovered.
Eugene “Bishop” Tannehill, 65, has during his 38 years in Angola become an ordained minister. Logan “Bones” Theriot, 61, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Ashanti Witherspoon, who has served 25 of a 75-year sentence for armed robbery, is recognized as a model prisoner, but he cannot get a parole hearing.
“The Farm” is a gritty meditation not on guilt and innocence, but on crime and punishment. Before handing out the harshest sentences, Stack observed, “you’d better believe in very solid justice. You just can’t send people away for the rest of their lives based solely on the testimony of their fall partner in exchange for a lighter sentence.
“I asked Bishop if there were a lot of innocent people in prison. He told me, `Innocent people you can probably count on one hand, but victims of the justice system — most of us.’ “
Stack said he was inspired to make a film about Angola after meeting Wilbert Rideau, whom he called “very much a co-director.”
Rideau, an Angola inmate since 1961, is serving life without parole for a brutal murder that year (his death sentence was commuted in 1972). The author of “Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars,” he is an award-winning journalist who since 1975 has edited the prison newspaper.
While “The Farm” could not have been made without the cooperation of Warden Burl Cain, Stack noted, it was Rideau who helped legitimize the project and who served as liaison between filmmakers and prisoners.
Perhaps the film’s most striking scene is Simmons’ long-sought parole hearing, at which he painstakingly presents his case. His bid is summarily dismissed the instant he leaves the room. Filming the hearing, Stack said, “There was the element where you’re thinking, `Gotcha.’ But the other side to that is that one of the (officers) afterward asked me if I would be interested in (producing) a weekly show called `The Parole Board.’ “
Had Stack been allowed to appeal his film’s case before members of the Academy’s documentary committee, he said would have told them that “if the film wins, it will have a positive effect on people’s lives. I think it could really make a difference.”
“The Farm” is $30. Order at 800-423-1212.
