The Meaning of Life
Synopsis
Kwìkwèxwelhp is a prison located in British Columbia where rehabilitation is centred on Aboriginal culture. The Chehalis First Nation provides the spirituality and Correctional Services Canada the prison structure. The Meaning of Life is a journey into the thoughts and voices of the inmates, many of whom are serving life sentences, and examines the effects of this unique partnership. This is a prison where Aboriginal elders teach culture and listen to the life stories of the inmates; a prison where everyone is welcomed with songs and drums, in a ceremony; a prison where some of the inmates go to the neighbouring community of Chehalis to work and to attend sacred events The men tell how they came to be at the prison, and reveal what it has been like for them to be here, The film gives a voice to many who have never been heard, who have lived in deep silences of the soul, some of whose spirits have been broken. And it is a film that asks the most difficult questions of those who watch: is there a justice system where we can find forgiveness and redemption?
In 2005, Hugh Brody and Kirk Tougas began filming in Kwikwexwelhp, With permission to move and speak freely in the prison, they were able to spend many hours talking with the inmates. This was a unique opportunity to listen to stories about life, and about prison, told by men whose lives have been wrecked by many kinds of abuse and violence. The stories they tell and the lives they have been leading within the prison system reveal many kinds of meaning. The threads of colonial history as much as the struggle with drugs weave together in the fabric of these lives. Childhood abuse, experience of residential school, the violence of the streets, losses of self and losses of sense. The men speak about these elements of their lives, and take us deep into what it has meant to be among the most disadvantaged, vulnerable and violent populations in Canadian society. This is a film about a particular experiment in justice, a 10-year partnership between a First Nation and Canada’s Correctional Services. It takes us to a prison that challenges many of the stereotypes of prison, and to men who, in their attempt to find meaning in their lives, defy any fixed idea about those who have committed some of the worst crimes. This is a film can offer us all a chance to see what kinds of meaning, and lack of meaning, there might be in life and in prisons.
Director's Statement
Notes from Director Hugh Brody
The Meaning Of Life is centred on the stories, experience and concerns of inmates at the Kwìkwèxwelhp minimum security prison in British Columbia, Canada. Situated in the Fraser Valley, the prison is a facility in which ideas of Aboriginal healing and spirituality form the foundation of rehabilitation programs. This is a unique partnership between Correctional Service Canada and the Chehalis First Nation, on whose territory the prison is situated – a partnership which has been evolving for ten years.
Over the course of two years we were given unprecedented access to the inmates and could move freely throughout the grounds without being chaperoned by guards, going from room to room, sitting with the men, sometimes without a camera, sometimes with. We were able to film many long interviews with inmates, in which they told of their lives, experiences in prison and reflections on punishment, healing and Aboriginal culture. As well as these interviews inside the prison, we shot sequences at ceremonies in the local Chehalis community which some of the men attend as part of their rehab, and followed them as they participated in work crews outside the prison fences. As well, several of the men allowed us to accompany them on parole and after their release. In all, nineteen prisoners participated in the work. The film grew out of these interviews as well as the filming of activities and life in the prison.
I realised early in the development of this project that the best outcome would come from not planning the course of the film, but letting it emerge from the material. The slow, cautious access to the men and the institution meant that we had to follow possibilities rather than a structural or even content approach. The men let the camera into their lives, and let themselves into the filmmaking, in hesitant and unpredictable ways. Thus I needed to be able to let the film take its form from their initiatives, their leads and the particulars of their stories, as also from the daily life of the prison.
This kind of filmmaking is only possible if there is a great deal of time to do the work and also a great deal of latitude in how the final film will be structured. We were able to take the time in the last stages of production and then the full post-production process that was needed for the form of the film to be found. We could not go into the edit with a plan, a theory of the film, that had been set out in any plans or film treatment at the outset of the project. Instead, we had to follow the voices, concerns and strengths in our footage to see where these would lead. So our form is very much shaped by the men in the film. This was a rare opportunity for giving a film the form that is true to the process itself as also to the voices of the men who, step by step, took the central place in the filmmaking.
The practice of the filmmaking has thus been able to follow its course without being urged into either a truncated process or a predetermined shaping of any particular kind of film. The taking of time, the listening to the men, the allowing of process – these have been the key elements of the practice that have been at the core of this project.
Additional information and materials can be found at www.hughbrody.com
Credits
With special thanks to:
Inmates & Staff at KWÌKWÈXWELHP and The Chehalis First Nation
This film was produced in collaboration with the University of the Fraser Valley, with the financial assistance of the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, Heritage Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canada Research Chair, the Law Foundation of British Columbia, and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.
Directed by:
Hugh Brody
Editor:
Haida Paul
Director of Photography:
Kirk Tougas
Produced by:
Betsy Carson
Location Sound:
Kirk Tougas
Boom Operator & 2nd Camera:
Tomo Brody
Technical Consultants:
Greg Davis
Neil Thompson
Production Assistant:
Stephanie Gould
Transcription:
Trace Sitter
Online Editor:
Ian Kirby
Graphic Design by:
Ian Kirby and Caleb Bouchard
Post Production Facilities provided by:
Sequence Post, Vancouver
Re-Recording Mixers:
Bill Shepherd
Robert Hunter
Sound Editors:
Haida Paul
Christine McLeod
Audio services provided by:
DBC Sound, Vancouver, Canada
Legal Counsel:
Brahm Martz
Satellite image courtesy of:
NASA
Still Photography:
Robert J. Minton
Patrick J. Endres
Alaska Photo Graphics
With many thanks to:
Kevin Busswood
Brad Whittaker
Chief Alex Paul
Angela George
Gabriel George
James Leon
Boyd Peters
Mark Noonward
Rob Harrison
Correctional Service of Canada
The Hon. Steven L. Point, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia
Gwen Point
Michael Jackson
Additional thanks to:
Marian Bancroft
Mike Brearley
Colin Browne
Penny Cherns
Arnold Cragg
Shirley Hardman
Gordon Mohs
Leslie Pinder
Juliet Stevenson
Halq’eméylem language:
Grandma Tillie Gutierrez
Cree language:
Daryl Ghostkeeper
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