Edition 24: 1–9 August, 2025

4. Addiction and Control

We’re Alive

United States
1974 — 49' / Color, Black & White

1

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Synopsis

Driven by their activism and an interest in the experiences of incarcerated women, the filmmakers designed and led a Portapack video workshop at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino, at the time the largest women’s prison in the United States.



Digital presentation courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive

Director Biography

Michie Gleason is a film director and screenplay writer who has written and directed three films – The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife (2001), Summer Heat (1987) and Broken English (1981). She was assistant to the director on the film Days of Heaven (1978).

Christine Lesiak. Producer, writer and director of documentaries with Nebraska Educational Television and PBS. Her documentary, Profit the Earth, was the second highest rated PBS documentary in the spring of 1990. Other credits include Reflections of a Bonehunter (Loren Eiseley Documentary), 1994.

Kathy Levitt is known for We're Alive (1974), Out of the Maya Tombs (2014) and Spinning Boris (2003).

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Director

Christine Lesiak

Kathy Levitt

Michie Gleason