Prison Valley, a documentary by David Dufresne & Philippe Brault, is a haunting view of a one of America’s greatest distopias.
From the introduction: “Welcome to Cañon City, Colorado. A prison town where even those living on the outside live on the inside. A journey into what the future might hold.”
16% of the Cañon City population is inside prison; it is an economy based almost entirely upon incarceration.
Cañon City has a population of 36,000 and 13 prisons, one of which is Supermax, the new ‘Alcatraz’ of America. The new Supermax was described by former warden, Robert Hood, as “a clean version of hell.”
The introduction to the documentary can be a little off-putting at first. The dramatic voice-over deals in emotive-speak and apparent hyperbole. But then you realise that the presentation is not an exaggeration – that the voice-overs are only shocking because of the underlying immutable facts.
Perhaps, as outsiders, French filmmakers Dufresne & Brault are the perfect artists to bring focus upon the most forsaken branch of America’s prison industrial complex?
WEB DISTRIBUTION
As well as taking on old(ish) prison subject matter in a new way, Prison Valley is purposefully designed as a web based project and “Web Documentary”. To view the film beyond its introduction you must sign in with either your Twitter or Facebook social network accounts.
Once signed in the website will bounce you between a mixture of multimedia, interviews, photo-galleries, non-sequitur video clips and auxiliary documents.
The documentary canvases opinion from various characters who the filmmakers meet along the way. The entire project is punctuated with the use of DVD-special-featuresque snippets. You can even attend a memorial ceremony for dead correctional officers.
BLOG
Prison Valley blog here.
Prison Photography 
14 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 4, 2010 at 11:57 am
cieldequimper
It’s interesting and pretty well made but not very in-depth.
May 6, 2010 at 11:21 am
Doug Shane
This is the most slanted video / documentary that could have ever been developed. The information is NOT correct and is NOT presented correctly. These film makers came into town with a plan to misrepresent as much as they could in order to create a shocking expose on a very quiet community. This is very irresponsible journalism. If you’re going to put the facts out there for all to see….get them right please and don’t misrepresent yourself to the community in order to gain confidence, free lodging, free meals and what every else you “scammed” from the community.
Doug Shane
Cañon City Chamber of Commerce
May 6, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Prison Valley – Le blog ! » Revue de web, de presse, et de médias
[…] https://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/ […]
May 6, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Prison Valley – Le blog ! » Web, press and media review
[…] https://prisonphotography.wordpress.com […]
May 8, 2010 at 9:48 am
Prison Valley Team
Dear Doug Shane,
Please find our complete answer to you here:
http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/en/forums/discussion/133/inaccuracies/#Comment_380
Thank you.
May 21, 2010 at 7:07 pm
joel deaton
I am a resident of canon city and this is the most hilarious piece of crap that I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. what a bunch of idiots.
May 25, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Rick van Laaf
No matter what criticism residents think they have to oppose the form of this documentary, or even if some think the journalists got some facts wrong: i still feel that this documentary is asking a question.
What happens when a community, a society and an economic system chose to look at incarceration as one of its sources of activity and revenues. What are the consequences of such a choice and is it, in the long term, made for the common good?
Those are interesting questions, which i personnally think are worthy of reflexion and debate.
Of course, one can tell that the authors have their personnal opinion on that matter, but i don’t see how this would prevent them from getting their facts right.
Besides, everybody else, especially residents of Fremont County, is free to expose their own facts and figures, or explain how *they* would answer the questions raised by the documentary. Maybe it’s a viable choice for a community. Maybe it’s even a smart one.
But calling this a “hilarious piece of crap” just doesn’t help me understand anything. It just makes me think you either missed a good opportunity to say something interesting, or a good opportunity not to say anything at all.
May 25, 2010 at 6:16 pm
petebrook
Rick. Thank you and I agree with your feelings. As distinctions between art and documentary become blurred – with regard aspects of visual style – then people will have more opportunity to cry foul of filmmakers intent. But, I believe that the Prison Valley documentary was made in order to convey the abnormality of US prison policy as it focused down on a single community.
For those that live in Canon City but do not accept that the town is at the sharp-end of an economically and morally bankrupt criminal justice policy is to miss the point of the documentary. Prison Valley can be thought of as a dark portent of a future culture as envisioned by David Dufresne & Philippe Brault.
May 26, 2010 at 8:59 am
You've got to be kidding me!
Wow! There are so many misrepresentations in the “documentary”. The towns in Fremont County are no different than any other of the towns of their size in Southern Colorado. Florence in particular suffers from the decline of the mining industry (coal and gold) which was what the town was built on. In addition you used to have to drive through Florence get to the mountains. This brought a tremendous amount of income to the town. But after Highway 50 was built it was no longer necessary to go through Florence. All of the tourism income just went away as.
September 16, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Zac
Canon is a clean versoin of hell? wow
How could someone that was problay here for about one month say something like that. Shit I lived here my whole life and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. 719 Canon City for life!
November 12, 2010 at 11:46 am
Revue de presse « www.philippe-brault.com
[…] https://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/ […]
November 17, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Camron
In regards to Mr. Rick van Laaf:
‘… or even got some of the facts wrong…’ do you mean ALL the facts wrong? Because honestly this video did a shit job of portraying the so called ‘question’ you say it’s asking. It came in with a mission to portray Canon City as, literally, ‘a clean version of Hell.’
They portrayed their bullshit information as fact, which in turn assists in the misleading of the people who actually paid attention to this incredibly ridiculous video. The people watching are, more often than not, assuming that what they are watching is based on fact, with evidence to back it up. I have literally never heard the term ‘Prison Valley’ in my entirety of living here and I think that it’s just ridiculous that these ‘journalists’ came here and made us look like we live in Hell.
And in regards to your statement: “But calling this a “hilarious piece of crap” just doesn’t help me understand anything. It just makes me think you either missed a good opportunity to say something interesting, or a good opportunity not to say anything at all.” I think that you truly are a fool. Mr. Deaton obviously wanted to express his feeling on how this video portrays Canon City. And, in my opinion, he did a damn good job on letting you know that it’s a crock of bullshit.
-Camron 🙂
November 20, 2010 at 6:48 am
Press « Philippe Brault – Documentary photography & film
[…] https://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/ […]
April 7, 2011 at 12:18 pm
La Revue de presse complète de Prison Valley | DufLab
[…] https://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/ […]