Search Results for "san quentin"

An ex-con sets up a program to straighten out hard-core prisoners. Things don't go as planned.

Ex-Army officer Jameson takes a job a prison guard at San Quentin. Joe, the brother of his new girlfriend May, is sentenced to the prison for robbery. When Jameson tries to separate lawbreakers from hardened criminals, badguy Hansen tries to stir up trouble by telling Joe about Jameson's interest in his sister.

A documentary made at the set up of a theater production, of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", directed by Jan Jönson, played by prisoners, at San Quentin State Prison in California.The play is about two men who meet on a lonely country road, waiting for someone called Godot to confirm their lives and make life easier for them to live. Towards the end Godot announces that he will not come tonight, but maybe tomorrow. Producer and director John Reilly and a crew spent four weeks at the maximum-security facility; rehearsal and performance sequences are inter-cut with footage of daily prison life and discussions with the principal characters.

A corrupt official at San Quentin tries to frame an innocent guard for several murders within the prison.

Desmond plays convict Mike Gilbert, who goes on the lam with fellow prisoners Gruber and Graham when he finds out his wife is divorcing him and feels he has nothing to lose. Gruber intends to get his robbery loot, which his father, Curly, has successfully hidden from the law. After commandeering a plane, they double-cross Graham, who assembles his gang to get revenge - and Gruber's loot. Meanwhile, Gilbert falls in love with Robbie, his ex-wife’s sister. Through Robbie’s influence, Gilbert decides to go straight, but his cohorts aren’t quite so willing to reform.

On February 24th, 1969, two days before he turned 37, Johnny Cash led his traveling troupe behind the foreboding walls of the California State Penitentiary at San Quentin, long known as one of America's toughest prisons.

Documentary about the staging of 'Waiting for Godot' in prison.

San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated town of San Quentin in Marin County. San Quentin opened in July 1852, it is the oldest prison in California. The state's only death row for male inmates, the largest in the United States, is located at the prison. It has a gas chamber, but since 1996, executions at the prison have been carried out by lethal injection, though the prison has not performed an execution since 2006.

A young female prison guard finds out that her first assignment is to San Quentin, one of the toughest prisons in the country.

San Quentin's new warden crusades for reform and for a framed inmate who loves a nurse.

Comedian Paul Rodriguez brings down the Big House in this live stand-up performance for the inmates of California's San Quentin State Prison. Rodriguez serves up his hilarious commentary on Latino culture, quirky friends and neighbors, embarrassing family members and life's most bizarre situations, and is rewarded with whoops and hollers from some of the country's most dangerous criminals.

Squires of San Quentin is a 1978 American short documentary film produced by J. Gary Mitchell. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. The film was shot in San Quentin State Prison and depicts "The Squires," inmates who attempt to convince troubled children to avoid criminal behavior.

Courtesy of The Freedom Archives 1972, 28 min. This extraordinary video is from a 16mm film “work print” made in 1971–1972, and includes interviews with George Jackson, Georgia Jackson (George and Jonathan Jackson’s mother) and Angela Davis, while she was still in the Marin County Courthouse Jail, before her acquittal. We have not been able to identify the other prisoners. As you will see, the film has no titles or other credits. The discovery of such amazing, previously unknown historic materials always leaves us thrilled and in awe, deepening our understanding of those times and affirming the mission of the Freedom Archives.

Members of a racially mixed cast of self-confessed murderers is transformed by acting in a play about slavery and freedom that took three years to mount.

“Twin” and “Happy,” two prisoners at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, experience, during their long sentences, an encounter with culture that forever changes their lives. They are reluctantly cast in the prison’s theatrical production of Waiting for Godot. With the backdrop of daily violence and complete deprivation of freedom, the yearlong rehearsal becomes an isolated space for contemplation and self-reflection. The leap to the theater stage is not as far as Twin and Happy imagine; afterall, their upbringing in a gang environment has already laid the groundwork for a form of acting—roles that they did not choose themselves, but that have led to the crimes that landed them each with a thirty-year sentence.

The violent history of San Quentin Prison in California.

“Frames of Freedom: The San Quentin Film Festival Sizzle” is a powerful doc that follows Rahsaan “New York” Thomas and Cori Thomas as they lead the charge in bringing the first-ever film festival inside a state prison to life. Alongside them, we follow D’Angelo “D’Lo” Louis, Bernard “Raheem” Ballard, and James “JJ’88” Jacobs on their personal journeys, each carving a unique path into the film industry, both while incarcerated and after release. Blending raw storytelling with intimate access, the film explores how filmmaking becomes a tool for redemption, self-expression, and connection—while spotlighting the emotional and logistical challenges of pulling off a cultural event behind bars. At its core, it’s a story about transformation, community, and the radical power of creativity.

Typical low budget action thriller about an undercover cop forced to infiltrate a tough American jail

Robert Conrad is Officer Stacy, an LAPD cop with an attitude. After busting a prostitute, she files a complaint against him. A week later he shoots her in an apparent frame-up job. Officer Stacy is prosecuted, found guilty of murder and sent to 'Gladiator School' (prison)! His partner (played by Benjamin Bratt) believes Stacy is innocent even though no evidence can be produced to say otherwise. Also working for Stacy's release are two internal investigation agents (one of them played by Ed O'Neill). Can these fellow officers get Stacy out of prison before the inmates teach him a deadly lesson?

A dirty corrections officer gets involved in a murder plot involving one of the inmates.

Part fact and part fiction, Zoot Suit is the film version of Luis Valdez's critically acclaimed play, based on the actual Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the zoot suit riots of 1940s Los Angeles. Henry Reyna is the leader of a group of Mexican-Americans being sent to San Quentin without substantial evidence for the death of a man at Sleepy Lagoon. As part of the defense committee, Alice Bloomfield and George Shearer fight the blatant miscarriage of justice for the freedom of Henry and his friends.

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.

A family man convicted of killing an intruder must cope with life afterward in the violent penal system.

Drama set in San Quentin prison.

The grim news made international headlines: On August 21, 1971, prison authorities discovered a gun on famed Soledad Brother author, activist and San Quentin inmate George Jackson. A shootout ensued, killing Jackson, two other inmates and three guards, and wounding three more officers. Authorities asserted that only lawyer Stephen Bingham could have smuggled the weapon into the prison. Fearing that a conviction for abetting the guards’ deaths would lead to his own murder, the attorney fled, beginning a long, strange odyssey of pseudonymous exile. Strange indeed for the Yale-graduate scion of politically prominent New England elites.

A San Quentin inmate, sentenced to life without parole, writes a play that catches the interest of a reporter.

Using rare historical footage, vintage musical recordings, and interviews with 88-year-old Pedro J. Gonzalez and his wife, this film chronicles Gonzalez’s long and colorful life, from his early days with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, to his career as a popular radio personality in Los Angeles in the 1930s, to the controversial court case that sent him to San Prison, a victim of the repressive forces operating against the Chicano/Mexicano community during that period.