Without expungement, every sentence is a life sentence.
As Wisconsin reforms its expungement process, the opportunity for a second chance for the formerly incarcerated hinges on a local activist named Shanyeill McCloud.
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Wisconsin's tribe's ongoing fight to protect Lake Superior for future generations. "Bad River" shows the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa's long history of activism and resistance in the context of continuing legal battles with Enbridge Energy over its Line 5 oil pipeline. The Line 5 pipeline has been operating on 12 miles of the Bad River Band's land with expired easements for more than a decade. The Band and the Canadian company have been locked in a legal battle over the pipeline since 2019.
For over 80 years, Merle Hayden has crusaded to recruit members to the utopian movement Lawsonomy. Founded by aircraft pioneer Alfred Lawson, Lawsonomy advocates for economic reform and clean, communal living that transforms followers into a "New Species" that will benefit the human race either in this life or the next. Merle joined Lawson as a teenager and never looked back. His high school sweetheart Betty Kasch, however, is tired of Lawson coming between them. Reunited after over 60 years apart, non-believer Betty wants Merle to join her in Florida. Merle's commitment to preserving Lawson's legacy, artifacts currently rotting in a barn alongside a Wisconsin highway, has Betty worried Merle may leave her for Lawson once again.
Fox Rich, indomitable matriarch and modern-day abolitionist, strives to keep her family together while fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. An intimate, epic, and unconventional love story, filmed over two decades.
American Movie documents the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, American Movie is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream.
The fates of undocumented immigrant workers and Wisconsin's $43 billion dairy industry are closely intertwined - and both are grappling with their options for survival as fears of ICE raids and deportations under the Trump administration grow.
The impact of mass incarceration is explored through an annual charity trip that takes children to visit their imprisoned mothers.
On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.
Inspired by the book of the same name, film-maker James Marsh relays a tale of tragedy, murder and mayhem that erupted behind the respectable facade of Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the 19th century.
This documentary is about the "World's Largest Trivia Contest" held in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Eight questions per hour are asked over 90FM, the student radio station at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, for 54 hours straight. This film highlights several trivia teams and how very differently they play the contest from the more serious teams to the teams who just get together to party. For most teams, Trivia is like an annual reunion where they can get together with family and friends and have fun doing something they all love.
After surviving a violent assault by a serving soldier who was convicted but walked free with a suspended sentence, Natasha O'Brien refused to stay silent.
By the end of his illustrious career, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves may well have been the preeminent lawman of the Old West. He brought upwards of 3,000 outlaws to justice and served in law enforcement for 32 years during Reconstruction after the Civil War. His story is one of an escape to freedom and the dangers of the West for a former slave who rose to become a legend of the law. Join us as we go in search of Bass Reeves.
Edwin Debrow Jr. murdered a cab driver when he was 12. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?
When a teenager from a political family in the Philippines is accused of a double murder, the country’s entire judicial system is put to the test after years of alleged corruption.
A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.
The Nature of the Beast explores the life and case of a woman, Bonnie Jean Foreshaw, who was subjected to years of abuse, as a child and in three separate marriages. At the age of thirty-eight, Ms Foreshaw was found guilty of first degree murder when, in a moment of panic, she accidentally shot and killed a pregnant woman in an attempt to protect herself from a man who was physically assaulting her at a gas station in Hartford, Connecticut. Both her assailant and victim were complete strangers to Ms. Foreshaw. Although the man later testified in court that he had pulled the pregnant woman in front of him as a shield when he saw Ms. Foreshaw take out her hand gun, she was nevertheless found guilty of pre-meditated murder. Ms. Foreshaw is now serving the longest prison sentence of any woman in Connecticut—45 years—without the possibility of parole.
Documentary film about the anti-war movement in the Madison, Wisconsin area during the time of the Vietnam War. It combines archival footage and interviews with participants that explore the events of the period on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus.
An intimate portrait of Alabama public interest attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, who for more than three decades has advocated on behalf of the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned, seeking to eradicate racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.
A feature-length documentary on the life and work of Wisconsin grindhouse cinema auteur Bill Rebane, featuring historians, critics, and filmmakers, plus cast and crew members who worked with Rebane himself.
What strange forces saved one isolated section along the Upper Mississippi River from the repeated crushing and scouring effects of glaciers during the last two million years? And what pre-Ice Age throwbacks survived here in this unique geologic refuge that holds more Native American effigy mounds, petroglyph caves, strange geological features, and rare species than anywhere in the Midwest? These questions and more are answered in this captivating new documentary. A team of scientists embarks on a journey of exploration to expose both the science and threats behind three unique features of the zone - rare plants and animals, odd geological phenomenon, and striking remnants of a Native American pilgrimage like no other.
