Oct 4, 2008

Media contact: Kim Lawrence
Cell: 604-302-6257
Office: 604-864-4611
or 604-504-7441, local 4611
kim.lawrence@ufv.ca 
 
 
New Brody film examines prisoner rehabilitation at Kwìkwèxwelhp
 
Two years in the making, filmmaker Hugh Brody’s latest feature documentary premiered on Saturday, October 4 in Chilliwack, B.C.  The Meaning of Life looks at a new model for rehabilitating prisoners — a collaboration between the Correctional Service of Canada and the Chehalis Nation of British Columbia — and explores a different way of looking at punishment and rehabilitation.
 
Filmed at Kwìkwèxwelhp (formerly known as the Elbow Lake Correctional Facility) in Harrison Mills, B.C., The Meaning of Life suggests that the current prison system can be significantly changed by including community in the process.
 
Brody, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley, was granted unparalleled access to prisoners and staff at the facility, as well as to the elders of the Chehalis Nation.  An accomplished anthropologist and filmmaker familiar with Aboriginal issues (Time Immemorial, The Washing of Tears), Brody has a unique talent for bringing social and justice issues to the screen. 
 
Seventy per cent of the men at Kwìkwèxwelhp are from First Nations backgrounds.  The remainder have agreed to accept Aboriginal spirituality and community as central elements in a rehabilitation program. Most of them are serving life sentences: the men followed in the film have committed murders, armed robberies and grievous sexual crimes. All of the inmates are struggling to find meaning in lives that have gone agonizingly wrong.
 
The question at the heart of this film is what happens in a correctional facility that is supportive of Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal ideas about healing. Brody explores the unique prison, now in its tenth year of collaborative operation, and delves into the lives of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal prisoners.  One of the inmates featured asked the central question of the film in his own way: “You commit yourself to death; you’ve taken away your life by taking a life…where do you go from there?” 
 
Brody is keenly aware of how many people in the world — tribal peoples, oppressed people, destitute people, people displaced by development — have lost their lives to various ideas of progress. “There are tens of millions of people for whom everyday reality is subverted by loss and dispossession,” he says. “For them, finding meaning in their lives is very problematic. Within Kwìkwèxwelhp, there are men who took us into lives of great loss and showed us in their own way how they do find meaning.”
 
Hugh Brody’s style of filmmaking creates its emotional shapes and achieves its impact without narration. Through interviews with inmates and elders, observing daily routines and activities at the prison, and following three men who have been recently released on parole, the film examines the question of what incarceration means within our society and the hope that a new approach may bring.
 
“One of the great things about Kwìkwèxwelhp is the way in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are sharing Aboriginal culture,” notes Brody. “It is the only place I've ever seen in which Aboriginal culture is in some ways the dominant culture, a place where non-Aboriginal people are encouraged to subordinate themselves to Aboriginal culture.  That’s one of the most moving and impressive things about the place for me.”
 
The Meaning of Life was produced in collaboration with the University of the Fraser Valley, with the financial assistance of the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, Heritage Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canada Research Chair, the Law Foundation of British Columbia and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
 
“Providing researchers with the tools they need to undertake leading-edge research and to share some of the knowledge gained from that research is what the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is all about,” said Dr. Eliot Phillipson, President and CEO of the CFI. “The research advancements that this documentary will enable are sure to have a real and positive impact.”
 
A DVD, consisting of the 82-min documentary plus two and a half hours of additional interviews with inmates, elders and experts, is available through Isuma Distribution International (www.isuma.ca) and Face to Face Media   (www.facetofacemedia.ca).  Copies of the DVD will also be made available for free to the B.C. Teachers Federation. 

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