Criminal Justice
by Nadine Pequeneza
Premiere Date: August 4, 2014
Does sentencing a teenager to life without parole serve society? Following a Florida man who received four life sentences at age 15, this eye-opening film reveals a justice system that routinely condemns young Americans to die in prison. (60 minutes)
by Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker and Peter Odabashian and Paul Stekler
Premiere Date: July 14, 2014
Election time in New Orleans: Corruption. Racism. Dancing in the streets. And one in-your-face politician trying to get re-elected. Let the good times roll. (90 minutes)
by Angad Singh Bhalla
Premiere Date: July 8, 2013
Herman Wallace has spent more than 40 years in a 6’ x 9’ prison cell. He works with artist Jackie Sumell to imagine his "dream home," questioning justice and punishment in America. (90 minutes)
by Bernardo Ruiz
Premiere Date: January 7, 2013
A veteran reporter and his colleagues at an independent newsweekly defy powerful drug cartels and corrupt officials to continue publishing the news. (60 minutes)
by Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco
Premiere Date: October 4, 2012
A riveting exposé of corruption and injustice in the Philippines, chronicling a sensational murder case that ends a nation’s use of capital punishment — but fails to free an innocent man. (90 minutes)
by Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy
Premiere Date: June 28, 2012
The extraordinary story of how a film, aiding a new generation of human rights activists, became a granito — a tiny grain of sand — that helped tip the scales of justice. (90 minutes)
by Marshall Curry
Premiere Date: September 13, 2011
Encore Broadcast: October 11, 2012
This provocative film lifts the veil on a radical environmental group that the FBI calls America’s "number one domestic terrorism threat." (90 minutes)
by Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway and Marshall Curry
Premiere Date: September 6, 2011
Two films featuring political activists who crossed the line into law-breaking and authorities who may have crossed their own lines to catch them.
by Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway
Premiere Date: September 6, 2011
Encore Broadcast: August 30, 2012
The story of two men who were accused of intending to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention, is a dramatic tale of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal. (90 minutes)
by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson
Premiere Date: July 26, 2011
In Zimbabwe, de facto dictator Robert Mugabe has unleashed a "land reform" program aimed at driving whites from the country through violence and intimidation. (90 minutes)
by Laura Poitras
Premiere Date: September 21, 2010
Encore Broadcast: August 16, 2011
Filmed in Yemen and Guantánamo, The Oath interweaves the stories of Abu Jandal, Bin Laden's former bodyguard and Salim Hamdan, a man facing war crimes charges. (90 minutes)
by Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete and Geoffrey Smith
Premiere Date: July 27, 2010
Encore Broadcast: August 23, 2012
Imagine being picked up off the street, told you have committed a murder you know nothing about and then finding yourself sentenced to 20 years in jail. (60 minutes)
by Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler
Premiere Date: June 22, 2010
In this intimate biography, Kunstler's daughters seek to recover the real story of what made their late father one of the most beloved, and hated, lawyers in America. (90 minutes)
by Olivier Meyrou
Premiere Date: June 30, 2009
The story of a family's struggle to seek justice for their murdered son while trying to transcend hatred and the desire for revenge. (90 minutes)
by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco
Premiere Date: August 19, 2008
Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, is brought to justice by one of his own in this cautionary tale about violating human rights in the name of "higher ideals." (90 minutes)
by Andy Blubaugh
Premiere Date: December 12, 2007
Scaredycat takes as a point of departure the beating of the filmmaker at the hands of a gang of young men who called themselves "The Portland Riders." (15 minutes)
by Larry Warner
Premiere Date: July 24, 2007
This is a baseball team where you can say it's three strikes and you're in. The San Quentin Prison baseball team is the subject of this documentary, which goes inside the walls of the maximum-security prison to show the team, called the Giants, playing ball. (10 minutes)
by Katie Galloway and Po Kutchins
Premiere Date: July 24, 2007
In the 1990s, at the height of the prison-building boom, a prison opened in rural America every 15 days. Prison Town, USA tells the story of Susanville, California, one small town that tries to resuscitate its economy by building a prison — with unanticipated consequences.
by Tod Lending
Premiere Date: September 13, 2005
Omar and Pete are determined to change their lives. Both have been in and out of prison for more than 30 years — never out longer than six months. This intimate and penetrating film follows these two longtime African-American friends after what they hope will be their final release. (90 minutes)
by Tami Gold and Kelly Anderson
Premiere Date: August 17, 2004
In the late 1990s, three victims of police brutality made headlines around the country: Amadou Diallo, the young West African man whose killing sparked intense public protest; Anthony Baez, killed in an illegal choke-hold; and Gary (Gidone) Busch, a Hasidic Jew shot and killed outside his Brooklyn home. Every Mother's Son tells of the victims' three mothers who came together to demand justice and accountability. (60 minutes)
by Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini
Premiere Date: June 22, 2004
The shocking hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapult a small Long Island town into national headlines, unmasking a new front line in the border wars: suburbia. (90 minutes)
by Patricia Flynn and Mary Jo McConahay
Premiere Date: July 8, 2003
Living in Iowa, Denese Becker was haunted by memories of her Mayan childhood. A quest for her lost identity in Guatemala turns into a searing journey of political awakening that reveals a genocidal crime and the still-unmet cry for justice from the survivors. (54 minutes)
by Whitney Dow and Marco Williams
Premiere Date: January 22, 2003
In 1998 James Byrd, Jr., a black man, was chained to a truck and dragged to death by three white men. Two film crews, one black and one white, document the aftermath of the murder. (112 minutes)
by Lourdes Portillo
Premiere Date: July 13, 1999
Tejana singer Selena was on the brink of blockbuster crossover fame when her murder at age 23 catapulted her into mainstream celebrity. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo gazes beyond the tabloids and points a sensitive lens on the cultural sensation that emerged around Selena's life and death. (54 minutes)
by MIchael J. Moore
Premiere Date: June 1, 1999
Shocking murders, massive manhunts and win-at-all-cost political campaigns propel this extraordinary story behind the enactment of the nation's toughest mandatory sentencing law. (86 minutes)
by Arthur Dong
Premiere Date: June 23, 1998
Arthur Dong goes inside prison to probe the minds and souls of men whose attitudes towards homosexuality have led them to murder.
by Peter Kuttner and Cyndi Moran and Eric Scholl
Premiere Date: July 5, 1994
This startling expose unravels a history of abuse of suspects by the Chicago police.
by David Van Taylor
Premiere Date: August 3, 1992
In 1995, a teenager claimed the heavy metal music of Judas Priest prompted him to attempt suicide. The drama of the ensuing trial provides the framework for David Van Taylor's disturbing look at teenagers today.
by Rhea Gavry
Premiere Date: July 27, 1992
A respected member of a middle-class community is accused by his children of sexual abuse. He denies the charges. Whom do we believe? Rhea Gavry uses a gut-wrenching case set in a comfortable suburb of Salt Lake City as a context for a timely reexamination of our attitudes toward the accused and the accuser when sex is part of the equation.
by Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond
Premiere Date: June 31, 1990
How can we curb crime? Three big city police chiefs reveal sharply differing philosophies of law enforcement. From Daryl Gates, who introduced SWAT to Los Angeles, to Anthony Bouza, who ruffled feathers in Minneapolis, to Lee Brown, who recently left Houston for New York, these top cop's ideas about the causes and cures of crime are as varied as their personalities.
by Nina Rosenblum
Premiere Date: June 26, 1990
In 1986, three women convicted of politically-motivated nonviolent offenses were transferred to a secret, subterranean prison where they were kept in constantly-lit near isolation, watched 24 hours a day and strip-searched routinely for nearly two years. The women were not imprisoned in Turkey or Iran or Chile, but in Lexington, Ky.
by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima
Premiere Date: July 16, 1989
On a hot summer night in Detroit, Ronald Ebens, an autoworker, killed a young Chinese-American engineer with a baseball bat. Although he confessed, he never spent a day in jail. This gripping Academy Award-nominated film relentlessly probes the implications of the murder in the streets of Detroit, for the families of those involved, and for the American justice system.