ISU Bengal

Issue date: 2/15/06 Section: Life

Troop 1500 is an hour long film documenting a new program growing in the correctional institutions of America. The documentary will be shown at 5:30 p.m. in the North Fork Room of the Salmon River Suite, on February 21

Over the past few months at ISU there have been a number of educational films, wholly titled: "Community Cinema: Real Reality Films", shown at the SUB. The last was January 17th's "Negroes with Guns". At 5:30, in the North Fork Room of the Salmon River Suite, on February 21st, will be shown "Troop 1500".

Troop 1500 is an hour long film documenting a program growing in the correctional institutions of America. The program periodically unites incarcerated mothers with their daughters for group therapy as well as for common Girl Scout activities like camp-outs and cookie-sales.

The group documented in the film is from Gatesville Hilltop Prison, near Austin, Texas. The Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein directed film focuses on the lives and happenings of 10 of the 48 girls while making their monthly trips to see their mothers, all of whom convicted of serious crimes, behind bars.

In America today there are an estimated 1.5 million children whose parents are incarcerated, and 90% of female inmates are single parents. Consequently, daughters are six times more likely to trickle into the juvenile justice system, say the directors of the film.

The program Girl Scouts Behind Bars, of which Troop 1500 is a part, began in 1992 with a council in Maryland. The program now involves 40 councils, or roughly 800 girls and 400 mothers. The girls in Troop 1500 range from age six to seventeen and meet with their mothers three times a month for the group activities.

Light refreshments will be served and the film will be followed by a facilitated discussion with Kimberly Cottrell, the membership marketing manager for the Girl Scouts of Silver Sage.

The remaining "Community Cinema: Real Reality Films" are March 21st's "Trudell", a biography of Native American activists and poet John Trudell, and April 18th's "The Real Dirt of Farmer John", a film about an unorthodox farmer's conversion of his farm to an organic one.

The series is a partnership between ISU, Independent Television Service, and Idaho Public Television. The films were selected from the public television series Independent Lens, airing each Tuesday at 10pm. For more info on Troop 1500 and the series at large, contact Rebecca Morrow at 292-2805 or gndrctr@isu.edu.

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