The following are films, performances, and installations hosts of States of Incarceration can use to accompany the exhibit or develop public programs. Note: these are not created by SOI or any of its partners.
Event Resources
A Place to Stand
Name:
A Place to Stand
Description:
A Place to Stand is the story of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s transformation from a functionally illiterate convict to an award-winning poet, novelist and screenwriter. Told through extensive interviews with Jimmy, his family, friends and peers, A Place to Stand follows Jimmy’s path from Estancia, New Mexico – where he lived with his indigenous grandparents – through childhood abandonment, adolescent drug dealing and a subsequent 5-year narcotics sentence at Arizona State Prison in Florence, one of the most violent prisons in the country. Brutalized by the inhumanity of his incarceration, Jimmy survived by exploring deep within, discovering poetry at his soul’s core. Through the life changing capacity of poetry, writing and arts, he stepped away from the violence and negativity around him, healing the wounds of his childhood and opening him to a new future. Jimmy’s extraordinary life is both inspiring and haunting, simultaneously an indictment of our current criminal justice system and a model of the potential for human transformation. A Place to Stand is inspired by Jimmy’s memoir of the same name, which has been called “elegant and gripping” (The Los Angeles Times) and “an astonishing narrative that affirms the triumph of the human spirit” (The Arizona Daily Star). It explores the life and mind of a man whose early life was dominated by sadness, rejection, anger and pain, a man who embraced language as a balm for his battered spirit, a man who – through the power of poetry – finally found his place to stand.
To gain access to the film contact the Director Daniel Glick, info@aplacetostandmovie.com.
Duration:
1 hr 25 min
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
Name:
A Place to Stand
Description:
A Place to Stand is the story of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s transformation from a functionally illiterate convict to an award-winning poet, novelist and screenwriter. Told through extensive interviews with Jimmy, his family, friends and peers, A Place to Stand follows Jimmy’s path from Estancia, New Mexico – where he lived with his indigenous grandparents – through childhood abandonment, adolescent drug dealing and a subsequent 5-year narcotics sentence at Arizona State Prison in Florence, one of the most violent prisons in the country. Brutalized by the inhumanity of his incarceration, Jimmy survived by exploring deep within, discovering poetry at his soul’s core. Through the life changing capacity of poetry, writing and arts, he stepped away from the violence and negativity around him, healing the wounds of his childhood and opening him to a new future. Jimmy’s extraordinary life is both inspiring and haunting, simultaneously an indictment of our current criminal justice system and a model of the potential for human transformation. A Place to Stand is inspired by Jimmy’s memoir of the same name, which has been called “elegant and gripping” (The Los Angeles Times) and “an astonishing narrative that affirms the triumph of the human spirit” (The Arizona Daily Star). It explores the life and mind of a man whose early life was dominated by sadness, rejection, anger and pain, a man who embraced language as a balm for his battered spirit, a man who – through the power of poetry – finally found his place to stand.
To gain access to the film contact the Director Daniel Glick, info@aplacetostandmovie.com.
Duration:
1 hr 25 min
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World
Name:
Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World
Description:
He learned music while incarcerated then gave great gifts to humanity
Armstrong's life was forever changed on New Year's Eve of 1913, when he fired a pistol with blanks into the air and was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys, where they had a boys band. “Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World” weaves live music by leading jazz artists with historic film to demonstrate the life-changing possibilities when music is offered in criminal justice. Audiences will hear Armstrong classics sung and played and see archival film clips and stills of Armstrong’s early life.
Historical records document that Louis Armstrong was confined to the Colored Waifs’ Home on and off between the ages of 11 and 14. Lucky for him, and all the world, there was a boys band at the home. He received his early musical instruction from the band director, who at first believed that nothing good could come of a boy from his rough neighborhood, but soon recognized Louis’ talent. Wynton Marsalis has called his harmonic innovations “the most brilliant in the history of jazz” and Louis Armstrong is still every jazz man’s hero. Artists for this show have included: Wynton Marsali, Clark Terry, Jon Hendricks, Wycliffe Gordon, David Ostwald and other great musicians. Who knows if the world would have had Armstrong’s brilliance and humanity, without the music training and mentorship he received while incarcerated.
This production premiered as part of Lincoln Center’s Reel to Real series. It is being offered as performance option with the “States of Incarceration” exhibit as it tours. For more information and booking, contact: info@musicontheinside.org
Presented by Alina Boomgarden Productions, LLC and Music on the Inside, Inc.
Duration:
Dimensions:
Access:
Tags:
Film
Name:
Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World
Description:
He learned music while incarcerated then gave great gifts to humanity
Armstrong's life was forever changed on New Year's Eve of 1913, when he fired a pistol with blanks into the air and was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys, where they had a boys band. “Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World” weaves live music by leading jazz artists with historic film to demonstrate the life-changing possibilities when music is offered in criminal justice. Audiences will hear Armstrong classics sung and played and see archival film clips and stills of Armstrong’s early life.
Historical records document that Louis Armstrong was confined to the Colored Waifs’ Home on and off between the ages of 11 and 14. Lucky for him, and all the world, there was a boys band at the home. He received his early musical instruction from the band director, who at first believed that nothing good could come of a boy from his rough neighborhood, but soon recognized Louis’ talent. Wynton Marsalis has called his harmonic innovations “the most brilliant in the history of jazz” and Louis Armstrong is still every jazz man’s hero. Artists for this show have included: Wynton Marsali, Clark Terry, Jon Hendricks, Wycliffe Gordon, David Ostwald and other great musicians. Who knows if the world would have had Armstrong’s brilliance and humanity, without the music training and mentorship he received while incarcerated.
This production premiered as part of Lincoln Center’s Reel to Real series. It is being offered as performance option with the “States of Incarceration” exhibit as it tours. For more information and booking, contact: info@musicontheinside.org
Presented by Alina Boomgarden Productions, LLC and Music on the Inside, Inc.
Duration:
Dimensions:
Access:
Tags:
Film
Photo Requests from Solitary
Name:
Photo Requests from Solitary
Description:
Photo Requests from Solitary (PFRS) is an activist art project that offers support to people living in long-term solitary confinement, while affirming their humanity and creativity. The project is an artistic collaboration transcending prison walls and a tool for educating and engaging the public in the movement for solitary reform.
To date, more than 100 men and women held in supermax prisons and solitary confinement units have been invited to request an image of anything at all, real or imagined—and promised that artists on the outside would fulfill their requests.
The resulting photographs provide an archive of the hopes, memories, and interests of Americans who live in extreme isolation and sensory deprivation—conditions that have been widely denounced as torture.
Like some 80,000 other people in U.S. prisons, the participants in PFRS are locked in small, concrete cells for 23 to 24 hours a day without human contact. Mental breakdowns, self-mutilation, and suicide attempts are common, and are an expected consequence of long-term isolation.
To arrange for a Photo Requests from Solitary exhibit at your venue, or to volunteer to take a photograph for someone in solitary confinement, contact photorequestsfromsolitary@gmail.com.
Duration:
Dimensions:
Varies - Photography
Tags:
Exhibition
Name:
Photo Requests from Solitary
Description:
Photo Requests from Solitary (PFRS) is an activist art project that offers support to people living in long-term solitary confinement, while affirming their humanity and creativity. The project is an artistic collaboration transcending prison walls and a tool for educating and engaging the public in the movement for solitary reform.
To date, more than 100 men and women held in supermax prisons and solitary confinement units have been invited to request an image of anything at all, real or imagined—and promised that artists on the outside would fulfill their requests.
The resulting photographs provide an archive of the hopes, memories, and interests of Americans who live in extreme isolation and sensory deprivation—conditions that have been widely denounced as torture.
Like some 80,000 other people in U.S. prisons, the participants in PFRS are locked in small, concrete cells for 23 to 24 hours a day without human contact. Mental breakdowns, self-mutilation, and suicide attempts are common, and are an expected consequence of long-term isolation.
To arrange for a Photo Requests from Solitary exhibit at your venue, or to volunteer to take a photograph for someone in solitary confinement, contact photorequestsfromsolitary@gmail.com.
Duration:
Dimensions:
Varies - Photography
Tags:
Exhibition
Prison Obscura
Name:
Prison Obscura
Description:
Curated by Prison Photography editor Pete Brook, Prison Obscura presents rarely seen vernacular, surveillance, evidentiary, and prisoner-made photographs, shedding light on the prison industrial complex. Why do tax-paying, prison-funding citizens rarely get the chance to see such images? And what roles do these pictures play for those within the system? With stark aesthetic detail and meticulous documentation, Prison Obscura builds the case that Americans must come face to face with these images and imaging technologies both to grasp the cancerous proliferation of the U.S. prison system and to connect with those it confines.
Duration:
Dimensions:
Varies - Photography
Tags:
Exhibition
Name:
Prison Obscura
Description:
Curated by Prison Photography editor Pete Brook, Prison Obscura presents rarely seen vernacular, surveillance, evidentiary, and prisoner-made photographs, shedding light on the prison industrial complex. Why do tax-paying, prison-funding citizens rarely get the chance to see such images? And what roles do these pictures play for those within the system? With stark aesthetic detail and meticulous documentation, Prison Obscura builds the case that Americans must come face to face with these images and imaging technologies both to grasp the cancerous proliferation of the U.S. prison system and to connect with those it confines.
Duration:
Dimensions:
Varies - Photography
Tags:
Exhibition
Slavery By Another Name
Name:
Slavery By Another Name
Description:
Directed by Sam Pollard, produced by Catherine Allan and Douglas Blackmon, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, the tpt National Productions project is based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name challenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The documentary recounts how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.
Based on Blackmon’s research, Slavery by Another Name spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled this “neoslavery” to begin and persist. Using archival photographs and dramatic re-enactments filmed on location in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators of neoslavery and includes interviews with their descendants living today.
Duration:
90 mins
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
Name:
Slavery By Another Name
Description:
Directed by Sam Pollard, produced by Catherine Allan and Douglas Blackmon, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, the tpt National Productions project is based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name challenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The documentary recounts how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.
Based on Blackmon’s research, Slavery by Another Name spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled this “neoslavery” to begin and persist. Using archival photographs and dramatic re-enactments filmed on location in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators of neoslavery and includes interviews with their descendants living today.
Duration:
90 mins
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
Slavery to Mass Incarceration
Name:
Slavery to Mass Incarceration
Description:
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) released Slavery to Mass Incarceration, an animated short film by acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple, with narration by Bryan Stevenson. The film illustrates facts about American slavery and the elaborate mythology of racial difference that was created to sustain it. Because that mythology persists today, slavery did not end in 1865, it evolved. Its legacy can be seen in the presumption of guilt and dangerousness assigned to African Americans, especially young men and boys, the racial profiling and mistreatment that presumption creates, and the racial dynamics of criminal justice practices and mass incarceration.
Slavery to Mass Incarceration is part of EJI’s Race and Poverty project, which explores racial history and uses innovative teaching tools to deepen our understanding of the legacy of racial injustice. By telling the truth about our past, EJI believes we can create a different, healthier discourse about race in America.
Duration:
6 min
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
Name:
Slavery to Mass Incarceration
Description:
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) released Slavery to Mass Incarceration, an animated short film by acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple, with narration by Bryan Stevenson. The film illustrates facts about American slavery and the elaborate mythology of racial difference that was created to sustain it. Because that mythology persists today, slavery did not end in 1865, it evolved. Its legacy can be seen in the presumption of guilt and dangerousness assigned to African Americans, especially young men and boys, the racial profiling and mistreatment that presumption creates, and the racial dynamics of criminal justice practices and mass incarceration.
Slavery to Mass Incarceration is part of EJI’s Race and Poverty project, which explores racial history and uses innovative teaching tools to deepen our understanding of the legacy of racial injustice. By telling the truth about our past, EJI believes we can create a different, healthier discourse about race in America.
Duration:
6 min
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
The Peculiar Patriot
Name:
The Peculiar Patriot
Description:
The Peculiar Patriot is a solo stage play in development by Liza Jessie Peterson and produced by MAPP International, NYC. It follows Betsy LaQuanda Ross, a self-proclaimed “peculiar patriot,” who makes regular visits to penitentiaries, boosting the morale of her incarcerated friends and family. Betsy is both victim and victor of this country’s prison system and represents the millions of men and women who sojourn to penitentiaries on a regular basis, subjecting themselves to long bus rides and security checks to visit incarcerated loved ones. As this witty love story unfolds, The Peculiar Patriot gives voice to the voiceless and shines a glaring light on America’s fastest growing industry while enchanting audiences with provocative thought, hilarious dialogue, and gripping pathos.
Duration:
75-80mins
Dimensions:
Tags:
Performance
Name:
The Peculiar Patriot
Description:
The Peculiar Patriot is a solo stage play in development by Liza Jessie Peterson and produced by MAPP International, NYC. It follows Betsy LaQuanda Ross, a self-proclaimed “peculiar patriot,” who makes regular visits to penitentiaries, boosting the morale of her incarcerated friends and family. Betsy is both victim and victor of this country’s prison system and represents the millions of men and women who sojourn to penitentiaries on a regular basis, subjecting themselves to long bus rides and security checks to visit incarcerated loved ones. As this witty love story unfolds, The Peculiar Patriot gives voice to the voiceless and shines a glaring light on America’s fastest growing industry while enchanting audiences with provocative thought, hilarious dialogue, and gripping pathos.
Duration:
75-80mins
Dimensions:
Tags:
Performance
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Name:
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Description:
A film about the prison and its life in the American landscape.
More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES is a film about the prison in which we never see a penitentiary. Instead, the film unfolds as a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from a California mountainside where female prisoners fight raging wildfires, to a Bronx warehouse full of goods destined for the state correctional system, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
With support from Cinereach, Vital Projects Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the National Film Board of Canada.
To gain access to the film, contact the director Brett Story, brett@prisonlandscapes.com.
Duration:
1 hr 30 min
Dimensions:
Access:
Tags:
Film
Name:
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Description:
A film about the prison and its life in the American landscape.
More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES is a film about the prison in which we never see a penitentiary. Instead, the film unfolds as a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from a California mountainside where female prisoners fight raging wildfires, to a Bronx warehouse full of goods destined for the state correctional system, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
With support from Cinereach, Vital Projects Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the National Film Board of Canada.
To gain access to the film, contact the director Brett Story, brett@prisonlandscapes.com.
Duration:
1 hr 30 min
Dimensions:
Access:
Tags:
Film
The Return
Name:
The Return
Description:
In 2012, California amended its “Three Strikes” law—one of the harshest criminal sentencing policies in the country. The passage of Prop. 36 marked the first time in U.S. history that citizens voted to shorten sentences of those currently incarcerated. Within days, the reintegration of thousands of “lifers” was underway. The Return examines this unprecedented reform through the eyes of those on the front lines—prisoners suddenly freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping navigate complex transitions, and attorneys and judges wrestling with an untested law. At a moment of reckoning on mass incarceration, what can California’s experiment teach the nation?
Duration:
1 hr 22 min
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film
Name:
The Return
Description:
In 2012, California amended its “Three Strikes” law—one of the harshest criminal sentencing policies in the country. The passage of Prop. 36 marked the first time in U.S. history that citizens voted to shorten sentences of those currently incarcerated. Within days, the reintegration of thousands of “lifers” was underway. The Return examines this unprecedented reform through the eyes of those on the front lines—prisoners suddenly freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping navigate complex transitions, and attorneys and judges wrestling with an untested law. At a moment of reckoning on mass incarceration, what can California’s experiment teach the nation?
Duration:
1 hr 22 min
Dimensions:
Tags:
Film