Carleton College will host a screening of the acclaimed documentary film “A Place to Stand” on Wednesday, May 11 from 7 to 9 p.m. in Olin Hall, room 149. Inspired by the memoir by Jimmy Santiago Baca, the film tells the true story of Baca’s transformation from a functionally illiterate convict to an award-winning poet, novelist, and screenwriter. Baca’s extraordinary life is both inspiring and haunting, simultaneously an indictment of our current criminal justice system and a model of the potential for human transformation.
Directed by Daniel Glick and released in 2014, “A Place to Stand” has been called “elegant and gripping” (the Los Angeles Times) and “an astonishing narrative that affirms the triumph of the human spirit” (the Arizona Daily Star). This event is free and open to the public.
“A Place to Stand” is based on Baca’s memoir of the same name, winner of the prestigious 2001 International Prize (Grove Press, 2001).
The film is told through extensive interviews with Baca, his family, friends and peers, “A Place to Stand” following Baca’s path from Estancia, New Mexico—where he lived with his indigenous grandparents—through childhood abandonment, adolescent drug dealing, and a subsequent five-year narcotics sentence at Arizona State Prison in Florence, one of the most violent prisons in the nation.
Brutalized by the inhumanity of his incarceration, Baca survived by exploring deep within discovering poetry at his soul’s core. Through the life-changing capacity of poetry, writing and arts, he stepped away from the violence and negativity around him, healing the wounds of his childhood and opening himself up to a new future. Today, Baca is considered to be one of the nation’s best living poets and has been called an heir to Pablo Neruda.
More at www.aplacetostandmovie.com.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of Educational Studies. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4102.
