This Web documentary written and directed by journalist David Dufresne and photographer Philippe Brault is a road movie unlike any other, a descent into the American incarceration industry. Meet the residents of Cañon City, a backwater town in Colorado’s Fremont County. Where even those who live on the outside live on the inside. A prison complex – like one would say apartment complex – home to 36,000 souls and 13 prisons, including Supermax, America’s new Alcatraz. Prison Valley thrusts the Internet user into the heat of the action, allowing him or her to speak directly to the film’s characters, or even to other visitors in discussion forums on the documentary’s issues. Images, sounds, words, documents, or posts gradually turn the story into an impassioned collective debate.
Justice has always been the beating heart of American policy, its films and literature. In a way, “Prison Valley” begins where Prison Break ends.
What is America today? To what extent will it stand for its own lunacy? How does it see itself?
The ordinary and extraordinary sides of Fremont County are both essential. “Prison Valley” strikes a nerve in how it foreshadows the future of our own society. Cañon City could easily be the blueprint for the city of the future, with its cutting edge jails, 16% incarceration rate, and Supermax, the prison of prisons, home to Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, Zacarias Moussaoui, and many others. In other words: in a Western society that has chosen imprisonment, repression, and control – rather than prevention and education – a visit to Cañon City is a journey into our future.
No one knows about the economic crisis, here. Not much, anyway. Because there aren’t any job cuts. “We don’t free the prisoners when the economy is struggling.” Here, the America hit by recession seems far away. Behind those walls, 7,735 inmates and as many stable jobs are directly related to, without mincing words: the prison industry.
“Prison Valley” is about the forces that come into play inside this Colorado valley. Prison. Industry. Profitability. Workforce. Inmates. Imprisonment. Always and forever. That’s what “Prison Valley” is: a road movie set in the “clean version of hell.” The peaceful Cañon City valley harbours America’s worst. Internet users will constantly shift from one extreme to the other to have conversations with characters who’ll jump at any opportunity to speak their minds, just like Americans in general.
“Prison Valley” seeks to refocus the viewer, whose attention is often taken up by too much external stimuli, while delivering on the Internet’s true potential: making the user central to the debate.
The main standalone story is a travel diary whose narrative “we” engages the viewer from the very beginning. At various points in the story, the user can access “interactive zones”, each of them different: discussions, experiences, supplements. Extensions that meld completely into the body of the story, taking place in various parts of its natural environment. And when Internet users exit the extras, they can take up the narrative where they left off. A first for a Web documentary and for documentaries altogether. While connected to the program, they will be questioned, and will be able to provide insight, answers, and reactions, if they so choose.
In “Prison Valley”, viewers are never alone. They can see the other connected users. They can, at given times, choose to meet them, discuss and debate with them while connected. They can also access forums to participate in discussions around specific issues. Sound galleries also allow the user to sink deeper into the “Prison Valley” atmosphere. All of them powerful sequences that end with the collection of user feedback.
“Prison Valley” only gets better with time, becoming richer from the discussions it triggers: analyses, key numbers, prospective studies, opinion pages, interviews, debates. Sociologists, philosophers, economists, and politicians will be asked to respond. The program is also going to communicate with the public at large, through a focus on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
