Art & Crafts is our podcast series that goes behind the scenes with the artisans who create the film and TV we love. This conversation is sponsored by HBO Documentary Films. Subscribe to audio episodes on Apple Podcasts.
Andrew Jarecki, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Capturing the Friedmans, says it’s a real “mind-expanding” experience to see how different audiences respond to The Alabama Solution, the acclaimed documentary he co-directed with Charlotte Kaufman.
Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January, Jarecki and Kaufman have screened their project around the country, from plush screening rooms with tastemakers and filmmakers to modest living rooms in Alabama alongside members of the local community impacted by the horrible treatment of inmates in the state’s prison system.
“You see how people are connecting with each other and realizing they’re not alone if they have a loved one who’s died in prison, or who became a drug addict in prison, or who was assaulted in prison,” Jarecki tells Ankler Media deputy editor Christopher Rosen. “But specifically on the filmmaking side, it’s opened people’s minds to the possibility of telling a story that’s not filtered by the authorities in the prison, because they’re going to encourage you to make something which is sort of propaganda, and we’ve all seen that on television, and elsewhere.
“Audiences, like filmmakers, are looking at it and feeling somewhat liberated, that maybe there are ways to tell stories that are not going to just follow the rules,” Jarecki adds. “Maybe we can push the envelope on the style of storytelling, the kinds of voices that you include.”
The Alabama Solution, one of 15 films on the Oscar shortlist for documentary feature, uncovers the violence, neglect and corruption inside the state’s penal system over several years using clandestine cell-phone footage and interviews with multiple incarcerated men.
“It’s very gratifying to hear people say that our film is powerful, and that they had no idea it was this bad, but on on another level, it’s also very gratifying when we hear people say it was like a thriller, and it it had them captivated, and it held them, and they didn’t want to look away — even though the material is so difficult, there is also beauty in it,” Kaufman adds. “That means a lot to us, because it means we’re going to have the opportunity to perhaps capture audiences who may not want to readily think on a Saturday evening, ‘I want to turn on a film about prisons.’”
Part of what makes The Alabama Solution so remarkable is the circumstances under which it was produced. Access for journalists and filmmakers to enter prisons and speak to inmates is greatly restricted and state-controlled. So Jarecki and Kaufman used cell-phone conversations, FaceTime calls and video shot directly by the inmates to create the bulk of their film. (Cell phone access is not permitted in prison, but as the film shows, the devices are smuggled into the facilities and sold, typically by prison guards.)
“We knew the ability to speak with them — these sustained interviews and conversations — was so rare and important that that was going to have to be a central part of the story, and that it would be, and they really wanted to be able to tell their story and themselves,” Kaufman says. “There were definitely conversations about whether, visually and in the edit, we were going to be able to put all of this together in conversation with our own footage, in a way that doesn’t feel chaotic and haphazard, and in a way that like feels all part of the same world and flowing, and you can go from the inside to the outside and not feel like you’re in a completely different film now.”
Frequently in the movie, footage from inside the prison walls cuts out, or calls are interrupted by guards or other issues. It was a choice, Kaufman says, they made to ensure the content mattered more than the presentation.
“It’s the voice and the access that matters, and so the medium becomes the message — that distortion is part of the truth of the inaccessibility of prisons, and so we also really wanted that to be part of the experience of the viewers,” she says. “We wanted them to be reminded that this isn’t just a camera and the filmmakers are with them; this took effort, and it was overcoming barriers to be able to have these conversations at all.”
The Alabama Solution is streaming on HBO Max. Watch the full conversation above.
