The Gold Coat Program at the California Men’s Colony State Prison sees long term inmates serve as caregivers for inmates with dementia.
Filmmaker Petra Volpe first learned about the program 12 years ago, which prompted a visit, and led to the development of a feature film inspired by the program, called Frank & Louis, which recently screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Volpe says during the visit, she was struck by the experiences of the inmates she spoke with.
“One of the sentences that really stuck with me is that the work of caring for another person who has Alzheimer’s and dementia really made these men feel like humans again,” she said.
“ I felt was such a powerful sentence because it also meant there was a time in their life where they didn’t feel like humans, and it makes total sense because a prison can be an extremely dehumanizing space, a space of violence and a space of compassionless-ness.”
Volpe says it was clear from the beginning that the story of the film would focus on a man taking care of another man.
“And then, it was about really trying to honor the truth and trying to really depict what I had heard in a most truthful and emotional way, to let people into this world, and show people outside that this kind of work is possible in a prison, that people are capable of transformation.”
Volpe says the experience of making the film reinforced the importance of having a purpose in life.
“Purpose is very much connected to caring, and I think it’s important to kind of reconnect to this very simple fact,” she said.
“For me, it was just so reaffirming that even in a place of such violence and toxic masculinity, you can find such extreme tenderness.. seeing men who had done unimaginably bad things like killing somebody, being able to be so caring just showed me…how transformable our human spirit is, and that the worst thing a person does in their life doesn’t have to define them for the rest of their life.”
“A person is much more than the worst thing she did or he did.”
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