“This Sunday, May 9th on the American T.V. Channel PBS there will be a documentary on inmates at a maximum security prison who are studying Buddhist meditation.
It is titled, “The Dhamma Brothers.” Check your local listings for times. In the Mountain Time Zone (U.S.) where I live it will air from 1:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m.”
Summary :
The Dhamma Brothers is a documentary film released in 2007 about a prison meditation program at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama.
The film concentrates on four inmates, all convicted of murder. It also includes interviews of guards, prison officials, and local residents. It includes reenactments of the inmates’ crimes. Music for the film is by Low, New Order and Sigur Rós.
The film has been compared to an earlier documentary, released in 1997, titled Doing Time, Doing Vipassana.
That film documented a large scale meditation program at Tihar Prisons in India with over a thousand inmates using the same meditation retreat format.
The film is directed by Jenny Philips, a cultural anthropologist and psychotherapist, Andrew Kukura, a documentary filmmaker, and Anne Marie Stein, a film-school administrator.
Philips is also releasing a book in late 2008 based on followup letters with the inmates, titled Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Meditation Behind Bars.
Source : http://thebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/
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