Real Time

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September, 1999: Ten wards in the California Youth Authority state prison system, with the assistance of a professor and five of his students, are given the chance to learn how to create their own films. Their crimes are various; ranging from homicide to armed robbery and assault. Hopefully, the time they will spend in O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility will profoundly affect their lives. O.H. was recently nominated for the Harvard Kennedy School's "Innovations in Government" award, as a remarkable institution that promotes rehabilitation through education and the arts. Wards attend high school year round and are taught by California certified teachers. O.H. inmates have a 60% success rate of never returning to prison because they are given education, creative opportunities, and a chance. Director Lee Miller, a professor at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, California, and his students began bi-weekly visits with O.H. inmates. The final outcome yielded two original short films written and directed by the wards and a feature-length documentary about growing up in prison. Real Time explores the power of rehabilitation through education and the arts and is a film no one can forget. - Al Owens