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Natural Life

Tirtza Even

2014 01:16:37 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Activism , Documentary , Politics , Youth/Childhood , State, The , Incarceration

Description

Natural Life is a feature-length experimental documentary challenging inequities in the U.S. juvenile justice system by depicting, through documentation and reenactment, the stories of five individuals who were sentenced to Life Without Parole (Natural Life) for crimes they committed as youth.

The youthful status and/or lesser culpability of these youths, their backgrounds, and their potential for rehabilitation were not taken into account at any point in the charging and sentencing process. The five will never be evaluated for change, difference or growth. They will remain in prison till they die.

The project portrays the ripple effect that the sentence has had not only on the incarcerated youth and their victims, but also on the community at large.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

About Tirtza Even

A video artist and documentary filmmaker based in Chicago, Even has produced both linear and interactive video work representing the less overt manifestations of complex and sometimes extreme social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S. and Germany, among others). Her work has appeared widely at international festivals, galleries and museums including the Whitney Biennial and the Johannesburg Biennial and is in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Jewish Museum, New York; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others. She has been an invited guest and featured speaker at numerous conferences and university programs, including the Whitney Museum Seminar series, the Digital Flaherty Seminar, Art Pace annual panel, ACM Multimedia, the Performance Studies International conference (PSI), the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference (SLSA) and others. She is an Associate Professor in SAIC’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department.