The Farm: Angola, USA

The Louisiana State Penitentiary is built on a former plantation on the banks of the Mississippi in the south of the United States. It is the oldest and largest prison in America, a total number of 5000 convicts are incarcerated there. Eighty percent of them is black, the staff mainly consists of white people – a contradiction that often gives rise to racial tension. Main character and narrator of the documentary is journalist Wilbert Rideau. He is serving his time in ‘Angola’ (the prison is named after the former plantation) after his death penalty was converted into life imprisonment. He leads the spectator through his world of cells and dormitories, he pays a visit to the last supper of a man who will soon be executed, and he shows us funerals and the AIDS wing. Apart from Rideau the film also introduces 22-year-old George, a newcomer who will have to learn to live with the thought that he will probably never be released. Previously, Jonathan Stack, Elizabeth Garbus and Wilbert Rideau made FINAL JUDGEMENT: THE EXECUTION OF ANTONIO JAMES (1996). Stack is also active as producer of non-fiction films like DAMNED IN THE USA (1992), HARLEM DIARY (1996) and LONE STAR HATE (1996). The latter film, about the murder of a homosexual young man, is part of the IDFA 1997 competition programme. In 1997 Garbus produced the documentary THE SECRET LIFE OF A SERIAL KILLER.