Turned Out: Sexual Assault Behind Bars (2004) - Medium Length

In the U.S. one out of every five men are raped during incarceration. Turned Out: Sexual Assault Behind Bars looks beyond the shock and inhumanity of prison rape to the intricate social hierarchy that keeps it alive. The film goes deep inside Alabama’s infamous Limestone penitentiary to uncover what Hollywood portrayals leave out: the long-term causes and consequences of prison rape.

With a startling lack of inhibition, a group of five inmates, a sort of jailhouse clan, reveal the workings of an elaborate inner society with its own political system and its own economy — a society where men sell their bodies for bags of coffee or chips, where sex is the gold standard, and where makeshift families are cobbled together out of fear.

At the film’s alarming conclusion, members of the once almost contented clan at Limestone, in the face of it’s disintegration, vividly describe the desperate rape of a new inmate, who upon his release, tells his family he had ‘been away at college for four years’. The first prison documentary to use High Definition videography, Turned Out, given the recent ban on filming inside most prisons, may well be one of the very last authentic prison documentaries.

Prior to DVD release, the VHS is available from www.cinemaguild.com domestically and from www.csassociates.com internationally.

Film Festivals Turned Out Awarded

• Input 2005 - Selected for Screening at both INPUT San Francisco and Post-INPUT Europe RTBF Belgium

Film Festivals Turned Out Official Selection

• Atlanta Urban Media Makers Film Festival
• Silver Lake Film Festival
• New Festival (New York Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival)
• Dallas Video Festival
• Detroit Docs International Film Festival
• Hutuz Brazilian Hip Hop Film Festival
• Trenton Film Festival
• Anapolis Film Festival
• Kansas City Gay and Lesbian Film & Video Festival
• Indie Outies
• Philadephia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
• Pixie-Flix Festival
• Philadelphia Video Festival
• Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival