We won a Royal Television Society award.
We won a Royal Television Society award.
We’re over the moon to be honoured with such a prestigious award. We won a Royal Television Society award this weekend for a hard-hitting film: ‘Women Lifers: Pennsylvania’s women serving Life Without Parole’, they created. The judges of the award remarked they chose the winner based on the “captivating interviews, intimate storytelling and [that it was] a really poignant piece”.
This documentary gives extraordinary access to a group of women prisoners in a US maximum-security prison, all ‘lifers’. In Pennsylvania a life sentence means the whole of your natural life, with no possibility of parole. You receive mandatory Life Without Parole (LWOP) if you are convicted of first or second-degree murder, even if you were only present at the incident and were not accused of being the person who ‘pulled the trigger’.
The documentary features an interview with Senator Stewart Greenleaf of the Pennsylvania State Senate. He makes an extraordinarily honest confession: “I was a very aggressive prosecutor. I was probably the prime sponsor of more mandatory minimum sentences than you can think of. We thought that by doing that, being tough on crime, it would make our streets safer, but that was a failed system. I got carried away with regard to that issue.”
These women have been inside for three or four decades now. They have formed a singing group in jail, The Lady Lifers, to sing about their lives, their bad decisions, their hope of seeing home some day. Is it just for them to die in prison even though they didn’t actually kill anybody? They express their anguish in heart-rending blues of the most moving and exquisite kind.
The Lady Lifers will almost certainly die in prison. They yearn to be released through the commutation of their sentences and are asking to be forgiven for their (often peripheral) part in the murders they became (often unwittingly) involved in. Being in the car when a boyfriend killed his ex-wife in anger in the house; having their learning disabilities taken advantage of and being dumped in it by the actual killers – each case highlighted in the film, retold in atmospheric noir gothic animation, shows the merciless outcome of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.
“It seems clear to me that we can’t treat all cases, all the time, in such a black and white manner and send people to prison for the rest of their lives. That being said, I’m not here to tell you what to think. Watch the film and decide for yourselves what you feel is right.” said one Jake J. Smith (Producer/Director & Co-Founder/CEO of Tusko)
Does the law in Pennsylvania and similar states need reforming to rethink the concept of ‘Culpable Homicide’? Does the Life Without Parole sentence need revision? These are the sort of difficult questions thrown up by ‘Women Lifers: Pennsylvania’s women serving Life Without Parole’.
The women are interviewed about their lives before and after the fateful incident that led them to jail. We see their crimes (in animated form) and can judge for ourselves whether they deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
The documentary is punctuated with contextualisation and explanation from prominent criminologists, lawyers and sociologists, who also discuss how women are treated more harshly than men in this criminal justice system.
Well done to everyone at Tusko for all their hard work. The team took a moment to celebrate our award with a bottle (or two) or champagne. The film will be available to view via Tusko’s channels soon. Watch this space.
As an agency with a background in documentary filmmaking, we take a keen interest in what is happening around the world. We care about things like justice, integrity, and freedom of speech.
One of the reasons we applied, and became a B Corp was to join an international collective of businesses working to make a positive impact on society. After a lengthy process, we achieved our B Corp certification at the beginning of this year. We want to be a part of the new movement fixing problems that humans create out of, for want of a better expression ‘greed and self-interest’ — rather than operating carelessly in the name of profit. If you’re interested in this new, certified way of doing business — check out bcorporation.uk to learn more.
That’s all folks.
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