Buddha Behind Bars

In 2002, the Vipassana Meditation Center of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, held a retreat in Alabama, consisting of an ancient, rigorous course of meditation that lasted 10 days. It was attended by criminals, down to the last man. Yes, it was the local population, but it was a very small part of the local population: the inmates of the Donaldson Correctional Facility, an end-of-the-road maximum-security prison in the Deep South. The story is revealed in The Dhamma Brothers, a film by Jenny Phillips, a cultural anthropologist and psychotherapist who first visited the prison in 1999, intrigued by tales of a group of prisoners, most of whom were serving life sentences for murder, who practiced meditation. She found them open and willing to talk about their struggles behind bars, and she brought in a film crew and interviewed everyone she could get her hands on – which isn't so easy in a prison. The ten-day retreat, which was arranged by Phillips, forms the heart of the film. It took place in the prison gym, an ad-hoc monastery that was adorned with carpets and curtains, with the hardened men left alone with their thoughts for the duration.

On May 2 and 3, Phillips and co-directors Anne Marie Stein and Andrew Kukura appear at the screenings of The Dhamma Brothers.
Mon., May 26, 7:15 & 9:35 p.m.; Tue., May 27, 7:15 & 9:35 p.m., 2008