Troop 1500 Wins Gracie Awards
Moving Documentary About Girl Scouts Beyond Bars Receives Two Honors
Apr 28, 2007
The documentary Troop 1500: Girl Scouts Beyond Bars was a big winner with the American Women in Radio & Television (AWRT), which recently announced the 32nd annual Gracie Award dinners, honoring programming created for, by, and about women that encourages the realistic and faceted portrayal of women in entertainment, commercials, news, features, and other programs. Director Ellen Spiro won an Individual Achievement Award for Outstanding Director for her work on Troop 1500 and the film also won Outstanding Documentary in the long format division.
Documentary About Women in Prison
The hour-long documentary about incarcerated felons and their young daughters who come to visit was created by filmmakers Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein. The Austin, Texas-based Mobilus Media production and Women Make Movies release, Troop 1500, delves into the lives of four convicts at Hilltop Prison in Gatesville, Texas, and their five daughters in Girl Scout Troop 1500. Facilitated by the warden, a social worker, and the troop leader, the girls come inside the prison for monthly visits designed to help heal the wounds and stop the cycle of criminal behavior caused by their mothers’ crimes, which include drug violations, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder.
“We wanted to be honest and fair in the depiction of what happened,” says Bernstein, who produced Troop 1500. “Relationships are explored between the girls and their mothers, between the girls and their troop leader, and between the girls themselves. With 88 hours of footage, there were many ways to play it. The film could have been devoted completely to the girls’ eye view or focus on just one family.”
A Broader Story in Troop 1500
Ultimately, she and Spiro, who directed and did camera work along with Deborah Eve Lewis, decided on a broader story. The filmmakers trained the girls to use camera equipment for documenting personal interviews with their mothers. They ask difficult questions such as “Why are you in prison?” and “What was your first night in prison like?” The mothers tearfully describe their crimes and admit to making “bad decisions.”
The documentary follows the girls on their trips to Hilltop Prison, accompanies them to the Lone Star Council where they admire merit badges and buy Girl Scout uniforms, visits them in their homes, and tags along on various camping adventures and cookie sales. Spiro and Bernstein did volunteer work with the troop for two years, and then spent an additional two and a half years filming after they received some grant money. Eventually the film made it into several film festivals around the country.
An Innovative Girl Scout Program
Bernstein says she became involved with the Girl Scout program after meeting the people involved in this particular group, and learning some of the staggering statistics, including that an estimated 1.5 million children have incarcerated parents and 90 percent of female inmates are single mothers.
Although she describes the prison library where the Girl Scouts meet as a clean and neat environment, she says the crew had a guard with them the entire time they were on prison grounds. Once they made it past the various gates and met certain restrictions, they were granted access to shoot most of their scenes.
“This is not a puff piece on the program,” Bernstein says. “We show how prison has a three-dimensional impact on these women.”
To learn more about documentaries of women in prison, read Movie Review of La Corona.
