Laticia Headings ’95

        Documentary filmmaker trains her lens on peace and justice

When Laticia Headings ’95, a former policy-management-studies major, joined Participant Productions in 2004 to run its documentary division, the company was just beginning to make its trademark socially conscious films: An Inconvenient Truth, Syrianna and Good Night, and Good Luck.

 During her tenure there, Headings met and worked with some of documentary film’s most notable producers and directors. She also produced Everest: A Climb for Peace, a film chronicling the efforts of the Everest Peace Project, an organization that promotes interfaith and multicultural dialogue. In 2005, she was one of seven climbers to reach the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro as part of the project, and she continues to promote its efforts.

 Now a freelance producer and writer in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Headings recently produced, Chain Gang Girls, a documentary about the only all-women’s chain gang in the United States. The show gives an insider’s perspective on this controversial women’s program in the Maricopa County, Ariz., jail system.

 “It sheds light on the stigma of being in jail,” she says. “These are daughters, sisters, mothers—and it’s important to know why and how they got here.”

Published February 12, 2012