The Quilters
These days, prisons offer imaginative programs that make use of the inmates’ time while developing their skills, which sometimes offers unexpected benefits. A Sing Sing prison program teaches acting classes with opportunities to perform. Acting means becoming someone else, which means the prisoner experiences empathy. The Prison Puppy Program coaches inmates to train puppies as working service dogs for wounded veterans. The perk: A dog’s unconditional love has been known to melt hearts, even those of hardened criminals. And now comes The Quilters, a 33-minute documentary released in 2024. It introduces a project from the Restorative Justice Program, in which maximum-security inmates in a Missouri prison design and produce custom quilts for children’s charities. Yes, you read that correctly.
Why would felons volunteer to make quilts? The answer is that prisoners will often participate in a satisfying, stimulating activity that distracts them from their caged lives, even at the risk of mockery by other inmates. Designing and completing a quilt is an artistic outlet that ignites creativity, the power to imagine and invent. It challenges the designer and makes him feel alive, useful, and in charge. And trusted. Watching these men so focused, captivated, and cooperative, it’s hard to believe we’re watching inmates.
This project may sound like a ninth-grade sewing class. But the penitentiary sewing room is a stimulating, harmonious workshop that gives the inmates a sense of pride and purpose for doing something both artistic and charitable. Not to mention appreciation received through the thank-you cards the children send, which the quilters read aloud and post on their bulletin board.
What all these prison programs have in common is that the participants feel useful. Whether they’re performing Othello or training dogs or making blankets for kids, it’s all therapy for the soul that makes people feel alive. Just watching this brief Netflix documentary is as powerful as it is soothing, not to mention educational, if you want to give quilting a try.
My Heroes Were Cowboys
Australian-born horse trainer Robin Wiltshire calls Wyoming home, where he lives on his horse ranch with his wife and son. Being around horses gives Wiltshire a sense of peace, and he relates to them as friends. He understands them as almost magical beings that make his ranch feel peaceful. It’s also a healing destination for troubled horses, and “troubled” is part of Wiltshire’s past, which the film explains. Horse owners deliver their rebellious creatures to Wiltshire’s ranch—probably with no intention of collecting them. But no worries. Soothing troubled horses comes naturally to Wiltshire, who knows how to put them at ease, and find their “better side.”
A huge fan of Westerns, Wiltshire became a horse trainer for ads and films, and even worked with Darrell Winfield, the Marlboro Man. He not only teaches his horses tricks, he invents them. And his own realization was that since horses’ eyes are positioned on opposite sides of their head, each new command requires training twice—once for each side of the body.
You don’t need to be a fan of horses to be mesmerized by this 22-minute Netflix documentary from 2021 that will win you over and soothe your soul.
My Mom Jayne
Starring in 26 seasons of Law & Order SVU, with Season 27 pending, Mariska Hargitay is the youngest of five children born to Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield, who died in 1967 in a car accident at age 34. Judging from Hargitay’s well-presented, heartfelt documentary, which she wrote and directed, the siblings all seem like very good people who share a warm family relationship. In fact, this film never runs out of fine, caring people, almost all related to Mariska.
Mariska was three years old when she and some of her siblings were passengers in a car accident that killed their mother. Longing to know and understand her mom, Mariska plunged head-first into researching the personal and professional life of Jayne Mansfield to produce what she calls “a labor of love and longing.”In 1950s Hollywood, Mansfield was cast in several movies as a classic “blond bombshell.” Like Marilyn Monroe, Mansfield wanted serious roles, but the studios bleached her hair blond to make her seductive, and then cast her accordingly. To film studio executives, Mansfield was a man magnet who filled the movie theaters with fans. But off camera, the real Jayne was someone else that few people ever knew: a smart, educated woman who was fluent in several languages and a fine classical musician on piano and violin. The Jayne we never met. Hooray for Hollywood?
Hargitay wrote and directed My Mom Jayne (HBO Max) to put the pieces of her own life together and understand her identity. The process of remembering their mom was highly emotional for all the siblings. And Mariska’s association with a serious Mansfield fan revealed some family surprises.
This well-sequenced and absorbing new film is presented through the perspectives of all the family members, as well as Rusty, Jayne’s press secretary. And we are witness to the many pieces of a family puzzle coming together. But it’s the warm, harmonious tone of every family member—and there are many—that gives this excellent documentary a beating heart.