‘The Alabama Solution’ documentary educating audiences before heading to LA for Oscars ceremony
By Ayron Lewallen
Click here for updates on this story
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (WVTM) — The Oscars are just a few days away, and the group behind one documentary could walk away with one of the most prestigious awards in film.
“The Alabama Solution” sheds light on the state’s prison system. It’s filmed mostly through contraband cellphones given to inmates to share their day-to-day lives.
The City of Birmingham hosted a screening at the Carver Theater on Tuesday to give people a better understanding of the issues. Documentary co-producer Beth Shelburne believes everyone has a collective responsibility to understand the experiences of those who are impacted by the justice system.
“The film represents a look at some of the things that are happening,” she said. “It does not represent the totality of the situation, which is really comprehensive, and across the system, we don’t really get into the lack of health care for people in the system, the crisis with people that are suffering from mental illness. There’s so many issues that are happening, and you just can’t include it all in a two-hour film.”
Danny Dandridge is one of the men who made the film possible by risking his life to record chilling video from inside the prison walls used in the project.
“It’s more than just a film to me,” he said. “It’s my life because I lived everything in the film. I was one of the ones that stood up and fought every day for not just my freedom, but for everybody else’s freedom. It was a lot of injustice going on in the system. The administration killing inmates and hiding it and getting away with it. I couldn’t take it no more. I just stood up—me and the rest of my brothers and a lot more other people—we stood up, fought, shot videos of the incidents and everything that was happening and we put it out there.”
For some who went to Tuesday’s screening, it was their first time seeing the film. Cathy Lee told WVTM 13 she left feeling encouraged to do her part to create the change she hopes to see.
“It was heart-wrenching,” she said. “I was already very aware of how bad it was in prison systems, but it was disgusting to me to realize how our systems are being used in this state, and especially being used as a almost as a slavery situation where we have people out working in the public and not being paid, and the state of Alabama is making money from that.”
Shelburne feels there’s still a long way to go before changes to the justice system are made. She said she feels like our state leaders failed those impacted by the justice system and hopes the documentary will get them to do better.
Part of that was inviting Gov. Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall to a screening of the documentary in LA before the Academy Award ceremony. She says those invitations were declined, though.
Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.