True Crime New York: The Naked City

From the victimless to the devastatingly brutal, crime is in New York City's bloodstream. A meditation on the complexity of "true" crime in the rotten apple -- from the Central Park Jogger Case to Giuliani Time, Bernie Goetz to Bernie Madoff. Ripped from the tabloid pages to the big screen True Crime New York is  a quarterly film, speaker and performance series.

The Naked City

Dir. Jules Dassin, 1948, 96 mins.

“The Naked City,” an Academy Award winning film, was largely shot on location throughout the streets of New York. Based on the story by Marvin Wald, “The Naked City” follows a police investigation of the murder of a young model.  “The Naked City” offers a beautiful, gritty, timeless, semi-documentary portrait of the city and its people, leading the audience through a  twisty murder investigation and causing hearts to beat faster as detectives race to close the case. Offering the juxtaposition of the “naked,” corrupt, city and an everyday ho-hum cityscape, “The Naked City” is the proto-police procedural, and “Dragnet” and “Law and Order” are its children.  This film (and the story that inspired it) is also where the phrase “8 million stories in a naked city and this is one of them” originated. Indeed.

Thursday, June 30th, 7:30pm

Mothers of Bedford

Jenifer McShane, 2011, 93 min.

Mothering can be difficult at the best of times but imagine trying to raise your children from prison. Mothers of Bedford follows five women incarcerated at New York’s only maximum security prison, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. While trying to nurture relationships with their children and play central roles in their lives, these women are also facing face the day-to-day struggle of life behind bars. The inmates at Bedford Hills are supported by an innovative children's center that creates a space for positive change in the least likely of settings: prison. Mothers of Bedford is a deeply moving story about these women, their journey and what it means to be a mother. Filmmaker, Jenifer McShane (the mother of two boys), spent five years interviewing and visiting these women inside prison and the families awaiting their return. The result is an unusually compelling and nuanced look at mothers behind bars.

Panel Discussion with dir. Jenifer McShane, Mary Byrne, Lorie Smith Goshin and guests from the film tba

Mary Byrne, PhD, CPNP, MPH, FAAN, holds an endowed professorship at Columbia University. She is Principal Investigator in a long term NIH funded study of maternal-infant outcomes of the prison nursery program at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Dr. Byrne was appointed first Director of the newly established Center for Children and Families where she continues to bring together and nurture both research and clinical projects that address children at risk.

Lorie Smith Goshin is an Associate Research Scientist at the Columbia University School of Nursing.  For the past fifteen years she has worked as a health educator and a nurse to care for vulnerable families and children. She is currently a co-investigator on a long-term study of outcomes for women and children who lived together in a prison nursery. She is also the lead investigator on a study of an innovative program in Brooklyn that allows convicted women to reside in a supportive housing setting with their children in lieu of incarceration.

Tuesday,  June 28th- Wednesday, June 29th, 7:30pm

Links:

Film Website: http://www.mothersofbedford.com/

Trailer: http://youtu.be/SbrFOyzwKr0