Herman's House

Last updated
Herman's House
Directed byAngad Singh Bhalla
Produced by Ed Barreveld
Loring McAlpin
Lisa Valencia-Svensson
Starring Jackie Sumell
Herman Wallace
Cinematography Iris Ng
Edited byRicardo Acosta
Music by Ken Myhr
Production
company
Storyline Entertainment
Distributed byFirst Run Features
Release date
Running time
80 minutes
CountriesCanada
United Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish

Herman's House is a documentary film, directed by Angad Singh Bhalla and released in 2012. [1] An American, British and Canadian coproduction, the film profiles Herman Wallace, a member of the Angola Three who had been in prison for over 40 years after his shorter prison term for bank robbery was extended with a disputed conviction for a murder he did not commit, and Jackie Sumell, a conceptual artist who has launched a project of building the dream house Wallace wishes he could live in if he is ever released from prison. [2]

Contents

Wallace is never shown in the film, and instead is heard only in recorded telephone conversations with Sumell. [3]

Distribution

The film premiered at the 2012 True/False Film Festival, [4] and had its Canadian premiere at the 2012 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. [2]

It was broadcast in July 2013 as an episode of the PBS documentary series POV . [5]

Awards

Bhalla was the winner of the Magnus Isacsson Award at the 2012 Montreal International Documentary Festival. [6]

The film was a Donald Brittain Award nominee for best social or political documentary at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards in 2014. [7] Ricardo Acosta was nominated for Best Editing in a Documentary Program or Series, and Ken Myhr received a nomination for Best Music for a Non-Fiction Program or Series.

The film won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming at the 2014 News and Documentary Emmy Awards. [8]

Legacy

Following Wallace's death of cancer in late 2013, Bhalla and digital media producer Ted Biggs created the interactive documentary project The Deeper They Bury Me: A Call from Herman Wallace, which was based around Wallace's time in solitary confinement, for the National Film Board of Canada. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITVS</span>

ITVS is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly series Independent Lens on PBS. Aside from Independent Lens, ITVS funded and produced films for more than 40 television hours per year on the PBS series POV, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. Some ITVS programs are produced along with organizations like Latino Public Broadcasting and KQED.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angola Three</span> American prison inmates in solitary for decades

The Angola Three are three African American former prison inmates who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".

EyeSteelFilm is a Montreal-based Canadian cinema production company co-founded by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, dedicated to socially engaged cinema, bringing social and political change through cinematic expression. Today the studio is run by co-presidents Mila Aung-Thwin and Bob Moore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Lang (producer)</span> Canadian film producer, director, and writer

Robert Lang is a Canadian film producer, director, and writer. His career began in Montreal in the early 70s working on independent productions and at the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary film director and cinematographer. In 1980, he moved to Toronto, where he founded his own independent production company, Kensington Communications, to produce documentaries for television and non-theatrical markets. Since 1998, Lang has been involved in conceiving and producing interactive media for the Web and mobile devices.

Magnus Isacsson was a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose films investigated contemporary political issues and topics in social activism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katerina Cizek</span> Canadian filmmaker and web documentarian

Katerina Cizek is a Canadian documentary director and a pioneer in digital documentaries. She is the Artistic Director, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab.

Ric Esther Bienstock is a Canadian documentary filmmaker best known for her investigative documentaries. She was born in Montreal, Quebec and studied at Vanier College and McGill University. She has produced and directed an eclectic array of films from investigative social issue documentaries like Sex Slaves, an investigation into the trafficking of women from former Soviet Bloc Countries into the global sex trade and Ebola: Inside an Outbreak which took viewers to ground zero of the Ebola outbreak in Zaire - to lighter fare such as Penn & Teller’s Magic and Mystery Tour.

The People of the Kattawapiskak River is a 2012 documentary film by Alanis Obomsawin exploring conditions inside the Attawapiskat First Nation, which in October 2011 declared a state of emergency due to health and safety concerns over a lack of housing and infrastructure, and remained in the public spotlight during the Idle No More protests.

<i>The World Before Her</i> 2012 Canadian film

The World Before Her is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Nisha Pahuja and produced by Toronto's Emmy Award winning Storyline Entertainment. The film explores the complex and conflicting environment for young girls in India by profiling two young women participating in two very different types of training camp — Ruhi Singh, who aspires to become Miss India, and Prachi Trivedi, a Hindu nationalist with the Durga Vahini.

Tales From the Organ Trade is a 2013 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock. It was produced by Ric Esther Bienstock, Felix Golubev and Simcha Jacobovici. The film was created in association with HBO Documentary Films, Shaw Media and Canal D. The film examines the shadowy world of black market organ trafficking. The film is narrated by David Cronenberg.

<i>Highrise</i> (documentary) Multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises

Highrise is a multi-year, multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises, directed by Katerina Cizek and produced by Gerry Flahive for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The project, which began in 2009, includes five web documentaries—The Thousandth Tower, Out My Window, One Millionth Tower, A Short History of the Highrise and Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise—as well as more than 20 derivative projects such as public art exhibits and live performances.

John Kastner was a four-time Emmy Award-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker whose later work focused on the Canadian criminal justice system. His films included the documentaries Out of Mind, Out of Sight (2014), a film about patients at the Brockville Mental Health Centre, named best Canadian feature documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; NCR: Not Criminally Responsible (2013), exploring the personal impact of the mental disorder defence in Canada; Life with Murder (2010), The Lifer and the Lady and Parole Dance, and the 1986 made-for-television drama Turning to Stone, set in the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackie Sumell</span> American artist

Jackie Sumell is an American multidisciplinary artist and activist whose work interrogates the abuses of the American criminal justice system. She is best known for her collaborative project with the late Herman Wallace, one of the former Angola 3 prisoners, entitled The House That Herman Built. This project is the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary film aired on PBS entitled Herman's House.

Parabola Films is a Montreal-based Canadian cinema production company founded by Sarah Spring and Selin Murat, a documentary filmmaker. Parabola Films focuses on the production of videos which demonstrate the role of cinema in social change. The company collaborates with other film-making organizations who emphasize storytelling.

Ann Shin is a filmmaker and writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Ed Barreveld is a Canadian documentary film producer based in Toronto who co-founded Storyline Entertainment in 2000 with Daniel Sekulich and Michael Kot. Since 2004 he has been the company's sole principal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremiah Hayes (filmmaker)</span> Canadian film director, writer and editor

Jeremiah Hayes is a Canadian film director, writer and editor. Hayes is known for being the co-director, co-writer and the editor of the documentary Reel Injun, which was awarded a Gemini Award in 2010 for Best Direction in a Documentary Program. In 2011, Reel Injun won a Peabody Award for Best Electronic Media. Hayes was the co-editor of Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, which was awarded a Canadian Screen Award for Best Editing in a Documentary in 2018. In 2018, Rumble won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary, and in 2017 Rumble won the Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. In 2020, Rumble received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. In 2021, Reel Injun is featured in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures core exhibition of the Stories of Cinema.

Zo Reken is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Emanuel Licha and released in 2021. Taking its name from a Haitian Creole slang term for the Toyota Land Cruiser, the film is an exploration of the impact of the international humanitarian aid apparatus on Haiti, centering on the ways in which it can be both a necessary lifeline and an instrument of economic inequality and repression.

My Real Life is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Magnus Isacsson and released in 2012. The last film Isacsson completed before his death, the film centres on the experiences of four young men in suburban Montréal-Nord who have turned to hip hop music as a creative outlet.

References

  1. Mark Jenkins, "Building A Home For A Client Who Can't Live In It". NPR, April 18, 2013.
  2. 1 2 Kevin Ritchie, "Hot Docs 2012: Reimagining the prison flick with Herman’s House". Playback , May 3, 2012.
  3. Stephen Holden, "Dreams From His Cell". The New York Times , April 18, 2013.
  4. Hannah Spaar, "T/F Review: Herman's House". Vox Magazine, March 2, 2012.
  5. Fausto Giovanny Pinto, "PBS to air documentary on NY artist's project". Newsday , July 7, 2013.
  6. T'Cha Dunlevy, "A fitting finale for late director Magnus Isacsson; Weeks before his death he was happily involved". Montreal Gazette , November 23, 2012.
  7. Manori Ravindran, "'Watermark,' 'My Prairie Home' up for Canadian Screen Awards". RealScreen , January 13, 2014.
  8. Julianna Cummins, "NFB, Herman’s House win Emmy Awards". Playback , October 1, 2014.
  9. Lauren Wissot, "An Interactive Journey Through Solitary Confinement: 'The Deeper They Bury Me: A Call from Herman Wallace'". Global Comment, October 23, 2015.