FESTIVALS:
* True/ False
* Full Frame
* Hot Docs
* Mid Atlantic Black Film Fest (Virginia)
* Best of Hot Docs Vancouver
* Open Roof Film Fest (Toronto)
* MOSAID South Asian Film Fest (Toronto)
* Prescott Film Fest (Arizona)
* San Francisco Int’l South Asian Film Fest
* Harlem Film Fest


Herman’s House

Category |Architecture, Environment, Human Interest
Year | 2012
Country | Canada
Running time | 81’ - 55'
Format |
Production | Storyline Entertainment
Director | Angad Singh Bhalla


Nominated for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming
Documentary Emmy® Awards 2014


‘What kind of house does a man who has been imprisoned in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?’ For almost 40 years Herman Wallace, a Black Panther member falsely convicted of murdering a prison guard, has been kept in a tiny cell in solitary confinement.

In 2001, when young artist and activist Jackie Sumell asked him to collaborate on an art project by imagining his ideal house, it was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship and a journey into the racialized brutality of the American justice system.

Shot over five years, the film follows Jackie and Herman—whose voice we hear only by phone—as they plan the house for an exhibition in NYC, the exhibition’s successful opening and Jackie’s trip to a post-Katrina Louisiana where Herman’s sister, his lawyer and released Black Panther members bear witness to an extraordinary survivor of injustice.

PRESS IMAGES: (click to preview)