Brett Story
2021The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Brett Story
Charisse Davidson, Lyndon B. Johnson
More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. This is a film about the prison in which we never see an actual penitentiary. The film unfolds a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from an anti-sex-offender pocket park in Los Angeles, to a congregation of ex-incarcerated chess players shut out of the formal labor market, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
car wash
Brett Story
In the spring of 2008, car wash workers throughout Los Angeles formed the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee of the United Steelworkers (USW), a precursor to eventual plans to unionize the informal workers of a multi-million dollar industry rampant with exploitation. Most of these workers are undocumented migrants from Central America whose aspirations have led them to washing cars in the city of angels. This experimental documentary, shot in super8 film, journeys into a city defined by as much by cars as it is immigrant labor to offer a quiet commentary on the relationship between class, place, and work.
car wash
A Debtors' Prison
Brett Story, Todd Chandler
In St. Louis County, the home of police-shooting victim Michael Brown, a practice with a long history has become systematic: the operation of modern-day debtors’ prisons. A Debtors' Prison follows two plaintiffs in an unfolding court case, Samantha Jenkins and Meredith Walker, as they describe the matrix of controls that subjected them to incarceration for being poor.
A Debtors' Prison
Roads Through Palestine
Brett Story
Billowing smoke pours from a bus, as a fire crew attempts to douse the flames. Long, aching lines of motionless vehicles sit at one of Israel’s hated checkpoints. Two men habitually pray on the road alongside their stopped car. A lone helicopter hovers overhead, reinforcing the reality of perpetual occupation. Roads Through Palestine is a cinematic portrait of life in the West Bank, and an intimate reflection on the geography of war. Directed by Brett Story with music by Stefan Christoff.
Roads Through Palestine
