Personal Stills

Production Stills

SYNOPSIS
4 February 1974. Patricia Hearst, nineteen-year-old granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The SLA first try to use her as a bargaining counter for the release of two comrades, then demand a food-distribution scheme for the poor. Patty is kept blindfolded and subjected to sexual and other kinds of abuse by her captors. After fifty-seven days of captivity she is offered the choice of going home or joining the SLA; doubtful that her captors will really let her leave alive, she opts to stay. Renamed Tania, she joins them in a bank raid and becomes notorious. The SLA decamps to Los Angeles. During a shopping expedition, Patty, Teko and Yolanda are almost caught by security guards. They flee to a motel and are horrified to see TV coverage of the SLA's safe house being stormed. The trio go on the run to Pennsylvania and San Francisco. In September 1975 they are caught. Patty maintains that her actions were carried out under duress but is convicted and sentenced to a prison term. Visited by her father, she tells him that she believes her greatest crime was in becoming a living inconvenience to the world's assumptions about her.

CREDITS
Producers: Thomas Coleman, Michael Rosenblatt,
Marvin Worth, James Baubaker, Linda Reisman
Screenplay: Nicholas Kazan
based on the book by Patricia Campbell Hearst with Alvin Moscow
Cinematography: Bojan Bazelli
Editor: Michael R. Miller
Production designer: Jane Musky

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