spoke digital films

I’m very pleased to announce that the Puffin Foundation generously awarded Spoke Digital Films with an Artist Grant to help us complete our documentary, Shielded Brutality, which documents a thirty-year history of police torture in Chicago, Il.

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Gus Puryear is the top attorney for the world’s largest private prison company. He also belongs to a Nashville country club with allegedly discriminatory practices regarding women and, possibly, minorities. Will those two facts keep him from being a federal judge? One former prisoner and activist certainly hopes so.

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Recently, the New York Times reported about a Pew Research Center study indicating that 1 in 99 American adults are behind bars, our country’s highest rate ever. I decided to do some research about the role private prisons play in the economics and politics of this development.

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While the complicated subjects of copyright and intellectual property law are by no means glossed over, they are bolstered with historical anecdotes, personal stories, discussions with filmmakers and archivists, and plenty of real world examples spoken in plain language. This is a book written by creative people with a passion for filmmaking, and it shows in the text.

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I remain awestruck by the number of mom and pop companies making big dollars in the defense industry… Imagine if the owners and employees of these companies wouldn’t dream of voting for a candidate that proposed cutting our education budget the same way I presume they vote for candidates who protect military expenditures. America might be a different country.

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