Redemption Time is a 70-minute performance film weaving together spoken-word poetry, live jazz, cinematic imagery, and the personal stories of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca and jazz violinist Christian Howes—two formerly incarcerated artists.
What gives the film its unusual power is the convergence of its art forms with the authenticity of two distinct lived experiences. Jimmy and Christian do not enter the film simply as subjects: each brings the artistic authority of a substantial body of work, along with a history that cannot be reduced to incarceration. The poetry, music, personal testimony, and cinematic imagery do not merely accompany one another; they deepen and complicate one another, creating an experience that can be felt before it is fully explained.
The film does not tell audiences what to conclude. It draws them into difficult questions about harm, responsibility, judgment, dignity, and belonging—and creates space for those questions to be experienced emotionally as well as discussed intellectually. That is part of why the film has resonated with such different audiences: people directly affected by incarceration, and people encountering these realities from the outside.
After ten years of development, the film launched nationwide in 2026. We partner with community organizations, educational institutions, and venues to present screenings, conversations, performances, and educational programs.
Jimmy Santiago Baca taught himself to read and write while incarcerated. He now has a PhD in Literature, has published volumes of poetry, and is the recipient of an NEA Literary Fellowship, a Vogelstein Foundation Award, the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award for Poetry, and the Hispanic Heritage Award.
Violinist Christian Howes was voted #1 in the Downbeat Critics Poll, named among the top jazz violinists by JazzTimes, and nominated for Violinist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. Howes has served as a cultural ambassador, performing in Ukraine and Montenegro at the invitation of the U.S. State Department.
Director David Gonzalez received his doctorate from NYU where he taught for ten years. His work has been featured at Lincoln Center, on PBS, and on NPR. He has received the International Performing Arts for Youth’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Joseph Campbell Foundation Fellowship, and a Drama Desk Award nomination.
Most of us have had to begin again: after a failure, a loss, a relationship that fell apart, or a period when the ways we coped caused more harm than relief.
Redemption Time lives in that territory. It approaches redemption not as a single dramatic event, but as the difficult, recurring work of facing what happened, accepting responsibility, and finding a way to live forward without surrendering human worth.
Watch our Film Trailer
Redemption Time is not a traditional documentary. There are no talking heads and no narrator explaining what to feel. It is a live performance captured on film, with Jimmy and Christian onstage using poetry, music, and personal testimony to tell the truth about where they have been and what it has cost them.
The film allows their different histories to meet without collapsing them into the same story. It speaks to the need to be seen as more than the worst chapter of one’s life, the desire to belong, and the difficult work of accepting responsibility while continuing to live forward.
The film’s ten episodes are anchored by Jimmy’s poetry and both artists’ lived experiences. Three currents run through the work: the code, redemption, and artistic expression as a means of survival and connection.
Chris entered prison at twenty years old, surrounded by older men in a world that demanded he learn how to carry himself quickly. He asked them what manhood required, and they taught him what they knew: the code of a convict—how to handle conflict, when to fight, and when to look away.
The code could protect him, but it also created impossible choices. Escalating disrespect could mean a new charge and a longer sentence; refusing to escalate could make him a target. The film stays inside that tension without pretending there is a clean answer.
The questions extend far beyond prison. What does strength mean when the available models are shaped by violence, scarcity, or fear? How do we unlearn survival instincts that once protected us but later threaten our lives and relationships? The film offers no pamphlet or formula. It shows two men still examining those questions decades later—and allows the audience to examine them too.
Jimmy and Christian carry different kinds of weight from their pasts, and the film does not wash that weight away. Redemption, as the film presents it, is slower and more demanding than absolution.
It begins with taking inventory: naming what happened, acknowledging who was affected, and resisting the temptation to soften the story. Christian speaks about the damage he caused and the years it took to face it directly. Jimmy remembers sitting with his back turned while another man was beaten, telling himself it was none of his business. These are lived memories, not abstract moral dilemmas.
The film holds accountability and human worth in the same frame. A person can carry the truth of what happened and still continue to build, repair, and serve others. Redemption does not erase the damage; it appears here as the repeated choice to face one’s life honestly and decide what to do next.
The film’s ten episodes move through brokenness, innocence, the fall, survival, complicity, violence, guilt, discovery, and redemption. Jimmy’s poetry and both artists’ lived experiences give each movement its own emotional language.
The journey begins with the recognition that damage does not separate us from humanity. It moves into memories of innocence, the choices and circumstances that narrowed each man’s world, and the moral pressures of incarceration—including the code of survival and the weight of complicity.
From there, poetry and music open another possibility: not a clean escape from the past, but a way to name experience, accept responsibility, and continue. The film closes with the river and a final poem offered without demand—an ending that moves toward light without pretending the darkness has disappeared.
During Christian’s incarceration, another prisoner asked whether he had read the poetry of Jimmy Santiago Baca. In Jimmy’s work, Christian encountered language for uncertainty, fear, and isolation—feelings he had not known how to name.
Music offered another form of connection. On the prison yard, Christian moved among people making rhythm with their hands, playing an acoustic guitar, or singing gospel as they walked. Music could cross lines that ordinarily divided people and create moments in which they could recognize one another differently.
Jimmy describes his own creative life as a consuming thirst. He saw poems in leaf dew and heard music in the wind. In a system attempting to drain life from him, the need to write kept something essential alive.
The film presents artistic expression not as decoration, but as a way human beings give form to experiences that ordinary language cannot contain. Poetry and music make room for memory, contradiction, responsibility, and dignity. That truth reaches beyond prison to anyone who has turned to a poem, a song, or the act of making something in order to understand what they were carrying.
Redemption Time reaches across communities because its questions are not confined to prison. Audiences do not need to share the artists’ histories to recognize shame, judgment, isolation, responsibility, or the need to belong.
Justice-impacted people, families, courts, correctional staff, and reentry organizations encounter experiences rarely represented with this specificity and humanity. Screenings inside detention facilities have prompted participants to reflect on their own stories in conversations lasting for hours.
Students, educators, artists, counselors, recovery communities, and faith and social-service organizations use the film to open conversations about literacy, creative expression, emotional intelligence, addiction, violence, dignity, and second chances.
Audiences encountering incarceration from the outside are invited to see people affected by the system in their full complexity—without looking away from harm or reducing anyone to a sentence, a label, or the worst thing they have done.
The film’s reach is both particular and universal: it speaks from two distinct lives while making room for viewers to examine their own.
On April 19, 2026, at 4:00 PM, Trinity United Methodist Church will host a special screening event of Redemption Time, a 70-minute performance film featuring poet Jimmy Santiago Baca and Asheville-based jazz violinist Christian Howes — artists whose lives were shaped by incarceration and who now give voice to stories of dignity, struggle, and renewal.
Directed by David Gonzalez, the film blends spoken word poetry, live jazz, and cinematic storytelling into a powerful experience tracing journeys from trauma and incarceration toward healing, belonging, and personal freedom.
The event invites the community to reflect on themes that resonate far beyond the screen — belonging and isolation, judgment and dignity, harm and healing, and the possibility of second chances. Admission is free, with optional donations.
The program will begin with live music and poetry readings, followed by the film screening, a panel discussion, and a closing reception at Deep Time AVL. The reception offers attendees an opportunity to connect and reflect on the film’s themes with neighbors, artists, and community partners.
This event is part of Second Chance Month, a national campaign raising awareness about the impacts of incarceration while encouraging second-chance opportunities and community reintegration.
Community partners include Deep Time AVL, 12 Baskets Café, Asheville Poverty Initiative, the Buncombe County Re-entry Council, the UNCA Prison Education Program, and Trinity United Methodist Church.
Sunday, April 19, 2026
4:00–4:20 PM — Live Music & Poetry
4:20–5:30 PM — Redemption Time Screening
5:30–5:50 PM — Panel Discussion
5:50–6:15 PM — Reception
Location:
Trinity United Methodist Church
587 Haywood Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Film info and trailer:
https://redemptiontimeshow.com/
Redemption Time centers on two artists who emerged from incarceration to become powerful voices for change. The film confronts injustice while lifting up human dignity, creative resilience, and personal healing. Through an intimate blend of artistic forms and storytelling, the work explores universal tensions — belonging and isolation, judgment and dignity, harm and healing — while inviting viewers to look beyond labels and consider what it means to be human, to belong, and to begin again.
“Redemption Time transcends dualities… It’s a profound invitation into the deepest truths of our shared humanity.”
— Dr. Peter Candler, Author
Christian Howes
Producer, Redemption Time
chris@christianhowes.com
(614) 332-8689
Jess Godden
Community Outreach Coordinator
Trinity United Methodist Church
trinitywavl@gmail.com
828-253-5471 ext. 101
Previews of the full film available upon request.