Did you first become interested in issues of legal justice, or did you first want to be a filmmaker?

Both. They were intertwined. In college, at Brown University, I was always someone who was a social activist, but I dabbled in experimental filmmaking classes. It became clear as I got into the real world that there was a way to combine these two interests. Specifically, my interest in prisons came through reading a book written by an inmate, Wilbert Rideau. He wrote "Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars," and it struck me that this was a way to explore the issue. There had been a lot of prison films made, but a prison film with the guidance of someone like Wilbert Rideau [an inmate in the Angola prison] could be new and special.

I contacted him and that relationship ultimately led to the making of "The Farm." And so the interest in prisons came in many ways through Wilbert. An interest in social justice and activism was sort of always in me. My father is a civil rights and civil liberties lawyer. Growing up, around the dinner table, the discussions were always about these issues.

Would you describe yourself as an activist filmmaker?

I think there are people for whom that term is more appropriate than me. And there are social advocacy films, which are funded by foundations, and can be very clear about their political agenda. I work within the system. This film was financed by HBO, which doesn't have a position on the death penalty, as a corporation.

I'm a storyteller, so no one says you have to be balanced. But I am working within the system, and central to my mission is to be a storyteller first and a social advocate second. Not a lot of people are going to watch my films unless they're good stories. It's kind of a dance between the two.

People believe that documentary films should be the same as other forms of journalism -- balanced, incorporating all views, objective. Do you see that as a problem?

You could make a film about child molesters without talking to the victims, and that would be a valid mission if you had something to say about the child molesters. And that also would make people furious. I think documentary filmmakers [are] not journalists. We are storytellers. The end products of what we do play in movie theaters or on TV for an hour and a half. So they have a different role. There have been people, with "Wanda Jean" or with some other films I've made, who say the victims don't get enough space and I've spent too much time with the perpetrators.

With this film, my mission was really to tell Wanda Jean's story. It was one woman's story. There has been criticism from people who have said that it should be more balanced. I just don't agree with that. I did include the victims in this film, but I could have not included them at all. Again, it was one woman's story. And anybody who's looking to a documentary for objectivity is misguided. There are many other venues where they can find things that are trying to be a lot more objective.

But there is that expectation of objectivity.

Because these are real events. And people have a sense that life has to be fair, and we need to represent each side fairly. But of course that's not what happens in a fiction film. People accept those as stories without balance, necessarily. I think the documentary, particularly verité documentaries covering present-day events as opposed to historical ones, look like news sometimes. So they want that balance, particularly people whose sensibility I've offended.

Do you plan to keep pursuing social justice issues in future projects?

Every film has led to the next film for me. With "The Farm," after spending so much time in the Angola state penitentiary, I felt that I wanted to go and spend time in the juvenile justice system. The juvenile system is supposed to be about rehabilitation and turning people around so they'll be ready to be fully functional adults. I spent time in the juvenile system with boys and actually learned girls are the fastest-exploding parts of the juvenile system. Girls who commit violent crimes are the fastest-growing part of the juvenile justice population. Then I started to spend some time with those girls, and I'm still working on that film. That work led to "Wanda Jean." Now I'm working on another project with HBO, which is in the very, very early stages -- about the human toll of the three-strikes law. It's not about death behind bars the way "Wanda Jean" is, but it is in another way. Maybe I've gotten to the end of that series of "everybody's dying." I think, unfortunately, the American criminal justice system gives me lots of things to sink my teeth into.

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