This article was prepared by Euna Kwon Brossman for the May 11, 2005 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
'Illiteracy is a prison. Education is my way of tearing down the walls, my liberation, a journey to other worlds." These words, strongly metaphoric in their imagery, are spoken softly by a man named Sammi in a place where you would least expect poetry: the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. Sammi is, in fact, serving a 98-year sentence for first degree murder. And yet, behind the walls of the oldest continuously operating prison in America, Sammi has achieved a sense of personal freedom he has never experienced before - by learning how to read and sharing that gift with other inmates.
Sammi and Nathaniel, another convicted murderer he is tutoring, are two of the central subjects in "How Do You Spell Murder," produced by Academy-Award winning filmmakers Susan and Alan Raymond. The documentary - one of 15 films that will be presented at the First Princeton Human Rights Film Festival, Thursday through Sunday, May 12 to 15, at the Princeton Public Library - explores the relationship between illiteracy and crime.
"These films, by courageous filmmakers, take us around the world, and address a variety of human rights issues," says librarian Pamela Groves, organizer of the festival. "We created the festival because we recognized the power of film to educate and stimulate a broad cross-section of concerned citizens. We're hoping it will provide an opportunity to come together in new ways and inspire us to take action to work toward positive change, locally and in the world."
While these films cover difficult issues, they can actually be very ispiring in the way they show the capacity of human beings to meet adversity with grace and determination. The screenings will be followed by discussions with the filmmakers themselves as well as other newsmakers who are shaking things up in the world of documentary.
Other featured films include "Thirst," a look at the global corporate drive to control and profit from water; "Every Mother's Son," the story of three victims of police brutality told through their mothers; and "Bombies," the story of the secret air war conducted by the United States over the tiny country of Laos and the millions of bombs that still remain unexploded across the Laotian countryside.
"How Do You Spell Murder?" was chosen to open the festival for a variety of reasons, according to Groves. "The challenge of addressing literacy in prisons, the relationship between literacy and crime, and the fact that this film was made right here in Trenton, all seemed like good reasons to open our festival with this documentary." The documentary will be screened on Thursday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m.
The festival committee includes a representative from ABC Literacy, a non-profit volunteer organization based in Princeton that specializes in helping adults with learning disabilities. One of its programs is the L.I.F.E. program - Learning Is For Everyone - where one-on-one tutoring is used to teach inmates how to read and write at the New Jersey State Prison. "It was through her participation that we became aware of the Raymonds and their impressive body of work, which includes 'Children in War,'" Groves says. That film, which won both a Prime Time Emmy Award for Outstanding Information Special in 2000 and a United Nations UNESCO Award, will be screened at the festival on Thursday, May 12, at 3 p.m.
The Raymonds' work has taken them to four war zones around the world, from Belfast to Bosnia, and into the worst inner city neighborhoods around the United States. "I used to look back and say to myself, what were we thinking," says Susan Raymond. "We had a young child but we were both young, and we wanted to chase our careers and have the life experience. But to have both parents in a helicopter, both parents covering a bomb scene. I just say thank God we made it."
Susan is the narrator, producer, writer, and director half of the husband-wife team, based outside Philadelphia, who rank among the most influential and distinguished independent documentary producers and directors. Their "young child," a son, is now 16 years old. Susan and Alan Raymond have been working together for more than 30 years. They made their mark in the documentary field with the 1973 PBS cinema verite series "An American Family," which captures the daily life of the Loud family, foreshadowing America's rising divorce rate and the emergence of the gay liberation movement.
In 1994 they won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary for "Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School," a film that depicts the life of an inner-city elementary school and in the process chronicles the deterioration of the nation's public school system.
"Once you've won an Academy Award," says Alan Raymond, who does the producing and the shooting, "you realize you don't have to spend your life dreaming of getting one. It's wonderful. It gives you a certain imprimatur. We live in a very competitive field now in television where editors are inundated with shows. It's hard to get a major review or feature article, so the award gives you a certain credibility."
The couple worked as staff producers for ABC News in the network news division, traveling from Belfast to Beverly Hills, but they found the format confining for the kind of storytelling they wanted to do. "Network news was great," Alan says, "but there was a lot outside our ability to control." The Raymonds got in at HBO on the ground level in the late 1980s. Now most of their work is produced for HBO and PBS.
They specialize in long-form storytelling, focusing on social issue documentaries an hour or more in length. "Our basic hope is that our work will affect public opinion," says Susan. Telling the story of the link between crime and the numbers of prisoners who are functionally illiterate, often because of a learning disability, was a natural choice for a couple committed to social change. Making "How Do You Spell Murder?" became especially pressing for the Raymonds when they discovered the L.I.F.E. program at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and found out that as many as 75 percent of the prisoners there are considered illiterate.
"A film like this is a reference for prison groups," says Susan. "The tape is being used by educators and researchers. We know it's being passed around to people who write legislation. Of course on the other side there are the victims' rights groups who have aligned themselves with the conservatives. These days there's a lot more sympathy out there for the victim than the criminal who doesn't know how to read."
Her husband concurs. "The link between illiteracy and crime is an important societal issue that no one wants to address. Our film first aired on Cinemax Reel Life on September 24, 2002. When we went to do the publicity and press, very few writers wanted to touch the subject. It was very chilling to see that there was no sympathy for that population." He points out that it's a very conservative time in the state and federal prison system, when less than one percent of state and federal prison budgets is used for prisoner education. "And yet this is while every study shows that education is the best way to rehabilitate, the best way to prevent recidivism."
"Learning to read is a basic human right," says Susan. "It borders on criminal behavior on the part of society to deny that right to some, and that's why we believe it's a human rights violation. Prisons don't put effort into rehabilitation. None of that prison time has been used productively to prepare the inmates for real life."
There were some difficult logistics in making the film, and one of the first hurdles was winning the trust of the inmates. The Raymonds spent over a year making the film. Their shooting ratio was 100 to 1, which means that of every 100 frames of film shot, 99 landed on the cutting room floor. They started with a tacit understanding that not everybody had to be in the film. "The prisoners were guarded and distrustful," says Susan. "Part of it was because they'd already had a whole group of people not giving them a fair shake. Lawyers, courtrooms, they'd already had enough of that. The other part of it was that their pride was on the line. They had to go to public and say they couldn't read. That was a big moment for them. It took patience and perseverance to get them to come forward, and they did, but it was tricky."
Alan says the prisoners were willing to relinquish their trust when they realized the Raymonds were in it for the long haul and were willing to invest their time and goodwill. "They understood that we weren't just coming in for the nightly news. We were going to hang around long enough to show their progress."
The challenge was to show the process of someone learning over a long period of time, not easily captured in video form. Sammi, the tutor, is serving time for murder. The Raymonds were lucky to be at the prison on the first night he met with another inmate, Nathaniel, 37, a convicted murderer, to begin the process of learning how to read. (Nathaniel was held back in the second grade five times.) Since Nathaniel has learned how to read, his case has been appealed on the basis that his confession was inadmissible partly because of his illiteracy. He has been moved to the Camden Courthouse Jail, and he is supposed to be getting a new trial. "When you go to court and you can't read, the lawyer can tell you anything," says another inmate, Kevin.
Susan reveals that another one of their challenges in shooting the film was the attitude of the corrections officers. "It made us unpopular when they saw that we were connecting with the inmates. They would try to frustrate us, little things like delays in getting us into the prison." That attitude, says the couple, is a small reflection of a systemic distaste for the subject of prisoners' rights in today's political climate.
"Most of the reviews were strong, but what has happened is that there's been such a swing to the right, it's a difficult process to pull that swing back," says Alan. "There's so much more than one story here. It's also the story of our failure to educate everyone, a giant red flag about the failure of the public school system. And no one wants to admit how badly it has failed certain populations. But people have the attitude, why should we care about a murderer? Prisoners rights issues are largely absent from the media. It's a part of society that's hidden."
The Raymonds discovered that the inmates liked to read religious books, especially the Bible and the Koran. They discovered a link between spiritual growth and becoming literate. Alan points out that the civil rights leader, Malcolm X, learned how to read in prison. Susan says: "Living in prison is a crushing and brutal experience. It's us versus them. Illiteracy is a prison within a prison. Being able to read is liberating."
They say they didn't set out to try to change the world through their documentaries; they sort of fell into it. And they won't reveal how long they've been married. "Since the flood, is what our friends believe," says Susan. She grew up in Chicago, went to DePaul University to study sociology and came of age in the 1960s. "I was on a mission to be Margaret Meade," Susan says. "I was working in a settlement house in Chicago. I have a great power to empathize with people, and I was drawn to their stories." She describes her parents as "regular folks," her father "a good union man," her mother a homemaker and aspiring artist. A larger influence on her life, however, was her older sister, a filmmaker she describes as extremely radical, who was the sound recorder on the Bob Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back" and also made a film about the Black Panthers.
Alan grew up in Queens, went to high school in Manhattan. His mother was an opera singer and his father taught international relations and politics at NYU so it was assumed he would go there. He ended up at NYU Film School as an undergraduate, where one of his classmates was director Martin Scorcese. He graduated into the Vietnam War and, heavily influenced by the relatively new cinema verite technique of the time, decided he wanted to work in documentaries.
The couple met in Chicago when Alan sublet Susan's sister's apartment and have been working together ever since. Their next project is under wraps. The only details they will reveal is that it is for HBO and it has to do with education. "We're in a golden era of documentary, driven by the technological revolution," says Susan. "With the digital equipment out there, anybody can make a film. I'm just really pleased that at this point in our career we're still working, making serious films."
Alan says: "You have a higher purpose, you're not doing stupid reality shows, and you're doing something that has some meaning."