TROOP 1500


AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY
CHALE NAFUS

New Spiro Feature Doc Goes Beyond Bars with the Girl Scouts

Directed and photographed by Ellen Spiro, produced by Karen Bernstein, Mobilus Media, DVCAM/16 mm, color, 2005, 68 min.

One traditional goal of the Girl Scouts-to teach survival skills in the wilderness-has been creatively updated to teach survival in the "wilderness" of contemporary urban society. Expanding on that theme, the "Girl Scout Beyond Bars" program has been best exemplified by Troop 1500 of the Lone Star Council. Under the leadership of social worker and troop leader Julia Cuba, this troop has been quietly accomplishing a rather extraordinary task-helping young girls forge stronger bonds with their imprisoned mothers.

Director Ellen Spiro and producer Karen Bernstein, both Austin residents and seasoned filmmakers, set out to document the activities of Troop 1500's very special participants-Julia Cuba, Dr. Darlene Grant (professor of social work, UT Austin), a prison warden, five mothers, and seven daughters.

Once a month Julia Cuba takes a small group of Girl Scouts to the Hilltop Women's Unit at Gatesville. For four hours they visit with their mothers and attempt to work through various issues normally arising between parent and child, now severely exacerbated by the incarceration of the adult. The film would have been quite powerful with just the scenes of the mothers and daughters visiting with each other, talking individually to the filmmakers, and being photographed in various cinema verite moments, but Ellen Spiro added another means of getting more deeply into these lives.

Given a "girlcam," each daughter is encouraged to videotape her mother answering a slew of questions. "Why are you in jail?" "What will you do when you get out?" The answers are sometimes evasive but more often revealing of bad choices or self-centeredness. In turn, the mothers get to ask their daughters questions. Alberta, a woman who liked to down a fifth of Night Train and "hit a few rocks" [of crack] before going out to rob, asks her older daughter, "How do you feel about me being in prison." When Zybra says honestly enough, "It hurts," the mother's mouth twitches with emotion.

There are many similarly powerful moments throughout the film. But Spiro didn't hand the documentary over to the participants like Bertolucci in NOVECENTO. Instead, as they interview one another with the "girl cams," the filmmaker's camera watches both mother and daughter from a distance as they trade questions and answers. In these scenes the adult and the child sometimes seem to change places emotionally. The resilience of the children is at times overwhelming as the film transports the majority of the audience to places they have never been or even worried about.Ý Who might we be if one of our parents had been in prison? The film forces us to consider that dreadful possibility of how a child's life may be changed by the parent's mistakes.

As Julia Cuba simply states about Troop 1500's goal: "We hope to strengthen the bond between mother and daughter in order to break the cycle of crime." What these five mothers did to land themselves in prison ranges from robbery, possession of heroin (Ida), possession of narcotics with intent to deliver (Kenya), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (Melissa), to murder through euthanasia (Susan). Latina, African-American, and Anglo, the five women try to explain to their daughters (and themselves) what mistakes put them in prison and what hopes and fears they have about reentering society.


The warden of the Hilltop Unit initially had reservations about the Girl Scout program but almost begrudgingly came to recognize some of its value. She still worries that the girls are getting a rosy image of prison life and believes that the four-hour visits are perhaps too lenient for the mothers. However, Julia Cuba doubts that prison looks very good to the girls since they are personally seeing it up-close and hearing about it from their mothers.

The filmmakers wisely give the audience the chance to draw conclusions about probable success or failure of the mothers upon release. Will Melissa or Kenya or any of the others be able to make the transition to the free world? Will they continue strengthening their relationship with their children? Julia Cuba reveals how some of the paroled mothers in previous Troop 1500 programs eventually missed the closeness they felt to their daughters during the visits to the prison. Somehow achieving that same level of intimacy and trust is even harder outside the prison walls. That is a devastating revelation.

They already failed their children by going to prison. As Alberta says, "I ended up hurting my kids more than anyone because they trusted me." When you look at Kenya, it is impossible to think of her taking her older daughter Caitlin on drug runs; the strain between the two becomes increasingly apparent as the film progresses. Can such wounds be healed?

We are also left wondering about the girls becoming young women. Will they make mistakes similar to those of their mothers? Will this program of Troop 1500 help keep them off the road to drugs, violence, and crime? There is hopefulness within the film. One of the grandmothers used to do crack but has been clean for 16 years. Can that lesson be passed on to the granddaughter's generation even if the mother failed to understand? Fortunately, the film reveals that all the girls in the film seem to have some warm, loving relationships with an adult - a father, step-father, or grandmother, the perennial caregivers that pick up the pieces. With that strong foundation even the mothers may have a better chance in life upon parole.

That's basically what we see - powerful opportunities for changing lives. Some will, some won't, but it's strictly anybody's guess who will make it. Whatever the outcome of each individual life, one can't help but admire the Girl Scouts and Troop 1500 for really trying to make a difference in these girls' lives. The film doesn't "solve" any problems it depicts, but it surely provides some level of hope for a few participants now that they have been given perhaps the final chance to reform their lives and pass their love and wisdom on to their daughters.