Dr. Jenny Phillips

USA

Dr. Jenny Phillips is a cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, writer, and psychotherapist. For the past twenty years, Phillips has provided mental health services in a medical center in Concord, MA. Her specialties include crisis intervention, family therapy, behavioral medicine, hypnotherapy, and mindfulness training.

Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with men in state and county prisons, teaching emotional literacy skills and mindfulness meditation. Based upon her experiences working with prisoners and recording their lives behind bars, Phillips wrote an article, Culture of Manhood in Prison, which was published in 2002 by the American Psychological Association Journal, Psychology of Men and Masculinity.

In 2008, Phillips produced and directed a documentary film, The Dhamma Brothers. The film had a national theatrical release in 2008, and a national broadcast on public television in 2010. The Dhamma Brothers tells the story of a group of prisoners inside a maximum-security prison in Alabama participating in a 10-day intensive meditation program based on the 2600-year old teachings of the Buddha. By portraying this intimate and personal journey among prisoners, many of them serving life sentences and others life without parole, the film serves as a vehicle to raise public awareness about the potential for personal transformation among prisoners.

The Dhamma Brothers has been shown in over 30 film festivals, including 12 international festivals, and had television broadcasts in Europe and the Middle East. During its theatrical release, it received positive reviews from major papers. “Intriguing—fierce irony and dark hope—powerful honesty and clarity.” (Los Angeles Times) “—“Mind boggling” (San Francisco Chronicle) --- “this provocative film candidly documents the mixed emotions and institutional conflicts aroused by the introduction of a Buddhist practice in a predominantly Christian prison” (New York Times).

While working on the film, Phillips collected more than 200 letters from the Alabama prisoners documenting their lives in prison and their quest for inner peace. These collected letters were published in 2008 by Pariyatti Press as Letters From the Dhamma Brothers. Publication of the book led to an interview with Oprah Winfrey on Oprah’s Soul Series broadcast on Oprah & Friends Radio (XM 156 & SIRIUS 195), and a web cast on Oprah.com. As part of this hour-long program, through a phone hook-up with the prison, Oprah interviewed two of the Dhamma Brothers. In 2008, Letters From the Dhamma Brothers received an award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Oprah Winfrey will be broadcasting The Dhamma Brothers on her TV network OWN TV this Spring.

In 2002, Phillips and her husband, Frank, The Boston Globe’s State House bureau chief, initiated a project in Cuba to restore the Cuban home and extensive documents of Ernest Hemingway. This historic project continues to serve as a unique shared endeavor sanctioned by both the U.S. and Cuban governments during a time of heightened political conflict. Jenny is the granddaughter of legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, who was both editor and close friend to Ernest Hemingway.

Through this ongoing collaborative work with the Cuban government, over 2,000 letters and documents, 3,000 photographs, and a 9,000-book library, all of which remained in Cuba after Hemingway’s death in 1961, are being restored for posterity. The documents, which include early, handwritten manuscript fragments from For Whom the Bell Tolls, had previously been inaccessible to scholars. The historic agreement, signed by Fidel Castro at a ceremony at Hemingway’s home in Cuba, Finca Vigia, has culminated in the addition to the Hemingway Collection at the Kennedy Library of microfilmed copies of the extensive collection of documents from Hemingway’s Cuban villa.