True/False Films

Secret Screening Blue

In person: director

Among the many fruits of our digital filmmaking revolution is an explosion in regional documentary filmmaking. No filmmaker represents this better than SS Blue's director, who has steeped his universally appealing in the specificities of his native Oklahoma. Now he turns his focus to Behind the Walls Rodeo, an annual cowpoke event featuring inmates — including women — as they wrestle calves and ride ferocious broncs. Untrained for this potentially fatal sport, but game for anything that offers temporary escape from their cells, these prisoners risk everything to entertain the general public. While following, Spellbound-style, the training-for-the-big-day action, the director offers opportunities to reflect on our society's oft-vicious attitudes towards criminals. One man hopes he sees a bull gore one of the inmates; others roar after convict rises from the dirt, face filled with blood. The director's camera gently records the inmates' stories, humanizing them. Still, the world outside remains hostile. (JS)