Documentary about Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola available to stream on Paramount+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBrpr7iI504&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lizajessiep.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ&feature=emb_imp_woyt
Playwright, actor, activist and educator Liza Jessie Peterson's 2022 short documentary about the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is now available to stream.
The MTV Documentary Films and Cinque Northern project Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices from a Plantation Prison tells the story of when Peterson's one-woman play The Peculiar Patriot was shut down mid-performance.
The film examines how Peterson's play challenged the country's largest plantation prison and impacted the incarcerated men long after the record of her visit was erased by Angola's administration.
"Literally 15 minutes before I was to go on stage, they told our film crew that we could not film, that we had to shut our cameras down, for no reason," Peterson said in an interview with Democracy Now. "We had no idea what the cause was. And then I went on and performed without filming it, and halfway through the show, when I go backstage to get ready for the next scene, Norris is backstage with a correctional officer standing behind him and he tells me that there's been an emergency in the chapel, and we have end the show."
The Peculiar Patriot is a one-woman show inspired by Peterson's decades-long work with prison populations. This show unpacks the human impact of mass incarceration in America and traces the migration of systemic injustice from the plantation to the prison yard.
Angola Do You Hear Us? is available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription or for purchase for $2.99 on Amazon Prime Video.
More on Angola Prison: ACLU Louisiana emergency filing asserts kids held solitary at state adult prison
Meredith G. White is the arts and culture reporter for the Shreveport Times. You can find her on Facebook as Meredith G. White, on Instagram and Twitter as @meredithgwhite, and email her at mgwhite@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Louisiana State Penitentiary subject of short documentary on Paramount+
