The history of the prison industrial complex is rooted in slavery and colonization, with an inherent purpose of reinforcing oppressive social and economic injustices. It’s driven by market forces that use surveillance, policing, violence and imprisonment as solutions to economic,…
The history of the prison industrial complex is rooted in slavery and colonization, with an inherent purpose of reinforcing oppressive social and economic injustices. It’s driven by market forces that use surveillance, policing, violence and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems. It is exacted by police officers, guards, ICE officers, and others that enforce state violence. Brutality and racism has always been the norm. The system is working how it was designed, and reform measures will always fall short.
To illuminate these realities and get to a world free of police and prisons - we need stories. Stories that share the history and harm of these institutions, stories that show people pushing back and taking action, and stories that bring forth irresistible visions of a future with humane and just alternatives to policing and incarceration. This was the intention of the Docs in Action request for proposals, which sought to fund short nonfiction films that can help define and amplify what prison industrial complex abolition means, and that inspire people to imagine and take action toward a world without police and prisons.
We are excited and honored to announce the recipients of the 2021 Docs in Action Film Fund. $125,000 was awarded to five filmmakers to complete short films that embody these narratives. They include: Adamu Chan for What These Walls Won’t Hold, Erika Cohn for Belly of the Beast (short version), Walidah Imarisha for Space to Breathe, Sylvia Ryerson for Restorative Radio, and Khary Septh for Pen Pals.
The complexities of abolition are deeply layered. It is both historical and imaginative. This is why narrative is such a crucial component of the abolitionist movement. “Abolition contains multitudes,” Red Schulte, Organizer with Survived & Punished New York, reflects on the ongoing work and struggle. “A central aspect to me, an aspect that keeps me recommitted to these politics and relationship experiments, is the creativity and imagination that abolition demands. Making visual narratives, like films, making our own media is so crucial to shifting social and cultural norms, beliefs and commitments. Resourcing people to make their art, to document our movements, to imagine different worlds — that has to be part of our political agenda.”
Working Films launched the Docs In Action Film Fund in 2018 to support the production of short documentaries that address critical issues of social and environmental justice. This year, we evolved how Docs In Action funding decisions are made. Because we believe that grassroots leaders and directly impacted people should hold the power to determine what stories are told and what films are funded to serve their movements, we ceded our role on the grant panel. The funded films were selected by our partners, which include Center for Political Education, Critical Resistance, MPD150, and Survived & Punished.
The intentionality to build power from the ground up is echoed in the words of Aminah Elster, Campaign & Policy Coordinator with the CA Coalition for Women Prisoners and organizer with Survived & Punished CA, “The overall process of the DIA panel allowed for proximate leaders working towards abolition at various intersections, to truly have a hand in selecting the narratives that most accurately reflect and amplify what our communities have long been experiencing.”
The 2021 Docs In Action Film Fund recipients include:
What These Walls Won’t Hold by Adamu Chan
The COVID-19 crisis inside California prisons has claimed the lives of over 200 incarcerated people and infected tens of thousands more. This film tracks the origins of COVID-19 inside the California state prison system and a newly formed coalition, led by currently and formerly incarcerated people, that brought forward an abolitionist framework to a life or death situation. What These Walls Won’t Hold explores how relationships, built on trust, shared liberatory struggle, and connections across broader abolitionist organizing work, can unfold into sites of resistance and radical change.
Adamu Chan is a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer from the Bay Area who was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison during one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. He produced numerous short films while incarcerated, using his vantage point and experience as an incarcerated person as a lens to focus the viewer’s gaze on issues related to social justice. Adamu draws inspiration and energy from the voices of those directly impacted, and seeks to empower them to reshape the narratives that have been created about them through film.
What These Walls Won’t Hold is produced by Christian Collins and Adamu Chan.
Space to Breathe by Walidah Imarisha, Jordan Flaherty, and Kate Trumbull-LaValle, in collaboration with Calvin Williams of Wakanda Dream Lab
Space to Breathe is an abolitionist science fiction hybrid documentary. The film is set in a future where there are no prisons or police, looking back at how today's movements built that future.
Walidah Imarisha is an educator at Portland State University’s Black Studies Department and a writer. Her work includes Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements and Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption. Jordan Flaherty is an award-winning journalist, producer, and author. You can see more of his work at jordanflaherty.org. Kate Trumbull-LaValle is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. She directed Ovarian Psycos (2016), Artist and Mother (2018), City Rising: The Informal Economy (2018), and she co-produced two of five episodes for the groundbreaking PBS series, Asian Americans (2020). Over the past 20 years, Calvin Williams has been worldbuilding for liberation as a dynamic cultural strategist & policy futurist, and is Co-founder and Creative Director for Wakanda Dream Lab.
Restorative Radio by Sylvia Ryerson
Every Monday night, Michelle Griffin dials into WMMT-FM community radio’s Calls from Home, to send a message over the airwaves to her husband, imprisoned 400 miles away. For thousands incarcerated in Central Appalachia, the show provides a lifeline to the world outside. Restorative Radio tells the stories of family and friends who call in, and those who listen in from prison. Directed by a former DJ of the show, the film portrays the many forms of distance that rural prison building creates — and the ceaseless search to overcome this regime of family separation and racial apartheid.
Sylvia Ryerson is a multimedia artist, journalist and PhD candidate in American Studies at Yale University. Prior to graduate school she worked at the Appalshop media arts and education center in Whitesburg, KY, where she served as a reporter, producer and WMMT-FM Director of Public Affairs. She co-directed and hosted Appalshop’s Calls from Home radio show, broadcasting music and toll-free phone messages from family members to their loved ones incarcerated, and Making Connections News, a multimedia storytelling project documenting efforts for a Just Appalachian Transition. She currently co-produces Melting the ICE / Derritiendo el Hielo, a bilingual radio show broadcasting testimonios and information to people detained by ICE in New Jersey. Her academic and artistic work has appeared on Kentucky Educational Television (KET), the BBC, NPR’s The Takeaway and Here and Now, the Third Coast International Audio Festival, in American Quarterly, the Boston Review, The Marshall Project, and Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist.
Restorative Radio is produced by Sylvia Ryerson, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Mimi Pickering, and Reuben Atlas. Impact production by Michelle Griffin. Cinematography by Randall Taylor Jr. and Ayesha Gilani Taylor.
Pen Pals by Khary Septh
Pen Pals shares the stories of the Black LGBTQ+ community caught in the web of America’s prison industrial complex. Exploring the story of Dominique Morgan who was formerly incarcerated and now is the Executive Director of Black and Pink where she works tirelessly to advance prison abolition and supports LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that system, we gain not only an analysis of the structural role of the PIC in maintaining white supremacy and capitalism, but also, a call-to-action for our community to engage in cooperative activities to end it. Dominique’s story as a Black transgender woman also adds the complexity of gender identity to the story, and how it relates to the extreme suffering of trans people trapped in the PIC, and also in society beyond the walls. Stories soften the heart so that the mind may rationally consider things like our moral obligation to support our incarcerated population, or the safety of trans identities in the prison industrial complex, and ultimately, our duty to topple the prison industrial complex. Pen Pals is a collection of these stories, all shared in service of ending the suffering of our people.
Khary Septh is a filmmaker and Executive Editor of The Tenth Magazine, a bi-annual publication that engages the world’s most dynamic LGBTQ+ artists and intellectuals of color in presenting content steeped the American tradition of politically engaged journalism that pays attention to long form, ambitious writing and critical queer thought. A graduate of Cornell University, before starting The Tenth, Khary spent many years as the head of Pink Rooster Studio—a Brooklyn-Based creative studio, and these days, spends his time living and working between New York’s Hudson River Valley and New Orleans, focusing on projects such as the Hudson Emergency Artist Response Team (HEART); non-conditional grants of $500 awarded monthly to BIPOC Hudson-based artists to weather the COVID-19 crisis, and The Tenth Academy, which strives to democratize access to quality mentorship and education, specifically for today’s Black and brown queer youth and adult communities through partnerships with institutions such as Spelman College and the Amistad Research Archives.
Pen Pals is produced by James Powell and Andre Jones. Cinematography by Drew McCrary.
Belly of the Beast (short version) by Erika Cohn
When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, Belly of the Beast exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.
Erika Cohn is a Peabody, Emmy and DGA Award-winning filmmaker who Variety recognized as one of 2017’s top documentary filmmakers to watch and was featured in DOC NYC’s 2019 “40 Under 40.” Erika directed/produced Belly of the Beast, a NY Times Critic's Pick, currently playing in virtual cinemas. Erika also directed/produced The Judge (TIFF 2017) and co-directed/produced In Football We Trust (Sundance 2015).
Belly of the Beast is produced by Angela Tucker, Christen Marquez, and Nicole Docta.
The COVID-19 crisis inside California prisons has claimed the lives of over 200 incarcerated people and infected tens of thousands more. This film tracks the origins of COVID-19 inside the California state prison system and a newly formed coalition, led by currently and formerly incarcerated people, that brought forward an abolitionist framework to a life or death situation. What These Walls Won’t Hold explores how relationships, built on trust, shared liberatory struggle, and connections across broader abolitionist organizing work, can unfold into sites of resistance and radical change.
Adamu Chan is a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer from the Bay Area who was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison during one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. He produced numerous short films while incarcerated, using his vantage point and experience as an incarcerated person as a lens to focus the viewer’s gaze on issues related to social justice. Adamu draws inspiration and energy from the voices of those directly impacted, and seeks to empower them to reshape the narratives that have been created about them through film.
What These Walls Won’t Hold is produced by Christian Collins and Adamu Chan.
Space to Breathe by Walidah Imarisha, Jordan Flaherty, and Kate Trumbull-LaValle, in collaboration with Calvin Williams of Wakanda Dream Lab
Space to Breathe is an abolitionist science fiction hybrid documentary. The film is set in a future where there are no prisons or police, looking back at how today's movements built that future.
Walidah Imarisha is an educator at Portland State University’s Black Studies Department and a writer. Her work includes Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements and Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption. Jordan Flaherty is an award-winning journalist, producer, and author. You can see more of his work at jordanflaherty.org. Kate Trumbull-LaValle is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. She directed Ovarian Psycos (2016), Artist and Mother (2018), City Rising: The Informal Economy (2018), and she co-produced two of five episodes for the groundbreaking PBS series, Asian Americans (2020). Over the past 20 years, Calvin Williams has been worldbuilding for liberation as a dynamic cultural strategist & policy futurist, and is Co-founder and Creative Director for Wakanda Dream Lab.
Restorative Radio by Sylvia Ryerson
Every Monday night, Michelle Griffin dials into WMMT-FM community radio’s Calls from Home, to send a message over the airwaves to her husband, imprisoned 400 miles away. For thousands incarcerated in Central Appalachia, the show provides a lifeline to the world outside. Restorative Radio tells the stories of family and friends who call in, and those who listen in from prison. Directed by a former DJ of the show, the film portrays the many forms of distance that rural prison building creates — and the ceaseless search to overcome this regime of family separation and racial apartheid.
Sylvia Ryerson is a multimedia artist, journalist and PhD candidate in American Studies at Yale University. Prior to graduate school she worked at the Appalshop media arts and education center in Whitesburg, KY, where she served as a reporter, producer and WMMT-FM Director of Public Affairs. She co-directed and hosted Appalshop’s Calls from Home radio show, broadcasting music and toll-free phone messages from family members to their loved ones incarcerated, and Making Connections News, a multimedia storytelling project documenting efforts for a Just Appalachian Transition. She currently co-produces Melting the ICE / Derritiendo el Hielo, a bilingual radio show broadcasting testimonios and information to people detained by ICE in New Jersey. Her academic and artistic work has appeared on Kentucky Educational Television (KET), the BBC, NPR’s The Takeaway and Here and Now, the Third Coast International Audio Festival, in American Quarterly, the Boston Review, The Marshall Project, and Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist.
Restorative Radio is produced by Sylvia Ryerson, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Mimi Pickering, and Reuben Atlas. Impact production by Michelle Griffin. Cinematography by Randall Taylor Jr. and Ayesha Gilani Taylor.
Pen Pals by Khary Septh
Pen Pals shares the stories of the Black LGBTQ+ community caught in the web of America’s prison industrial complex. Exploring the story of Dominique Morgan who was formerly incarcerated and now is the Executive Director of Black and Pink where she works tirelessly to advance prison abolition and supports LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that system, we gain not only an analysis of the structural role of the PIC in maintaining white supremacy and capitalism, but also, a call-to-action for our community to engage in cooperative activities to end it. Dominique’s story as a Black transgender woman also adds the complexity of gender identity to the story, and how it relates to the extreme suffering of trans people trapped in the PIC, and also in society beyond the walls. Stories soften the heart so that the mind may rationally consider things like our moral obligation to support our incarcerated population, or the safety of trans identities in the prison industrial complex, and ultimately, our duty to topple the prison industrial complex. Pen Pals is a collection of these stories, all shared in service of ending the suffering of our people.
Khary Septh is a filmmaker and Executive Editor of The Tenth Magazine, a bi-annual publication that engages the world’s most dynamic LGBTQ+ artists and intellectuals of color in presenting content steeped the American tradition of politically engaged journalism that pays attention to long form, ambitious writing and critical queer thought. A graduate of Cornell University, before starting The Tenth, Khary spent many years as the head of Pink Rooster Studio—a Brooklyn-Based creative studio, and these days, spends his time living and working between New York’s Hudson River Valley and New Orleans, focusing on projects such as the Hudson Emergency Artist Response Team (HEART); non-conditional grants of $500 awarded monthly to BIPOC Hudson-based artists to weather the COVID-19 crisis, and The Tenth Academy, which strives to democratize access to quality mentorship and education, specifically for today’s Black and brown queer youth and adult communities through partnerships with institutions such as Spelman College and the Amistad Research Archives.
Pen Pals is produced by James Powell and Andre Jones. Cinematography by Drew McCrary.
Belly of the Beast (short version) by Erika Cohn
When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, Belly of the Beast exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.
Erika Cohn is a Peabody, Emmy and DGA Award-winning filmmaker who Variety recognized as one of 2017’s top documentary filmmakers to watch and was featured in DOC NYC’s 2019 “40 Under 40.” Erika directed/produced Belly of the Beast, a NY Times Critic's Pick, currently playing in virtual cinemas. Erika also directed/produced The Judge (TIFF 2017) and co-directed/produced In Football We Trust (Sundance 2015).
Belly of the Beast is produced by Angela Tucker, Christen Marquez, and Nicole Docta.
The Docs in Action Film Fund is made possible with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
After a 75-year-old immigrant mother gets fired from her job, her son takes her on a bucket-list adventure to reclaim her life. As she struggles to find work, he documents a journey that uncovers the betrayals plaguing her past and the economic insecurity shaping not only her future, but also that of an entire generation. 
Play is a lifeline for black girls across the generations. 
During the height of the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago, Unapologetic captures a community of millennial organizers confronting an administration complicit in state violence against its Black residents. Janaé and Bella, two Black queer women organizers, provide an intimate peek into the personal and political battles that transformed Chicago, from the police murder of Rekia Boyd to the election of Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
The Center for Coalfield Justice is a 501(c)(3) environmental justice nonprofit in Pennsylvania whose mission is to improve policy and regulations for the oversight of fossil fuel extraction and use; to educate, empower and organize coalfield residents; and to protect public and environmental health. Their approach for working with area residents values their knowledge about the land, waterways, and communities. We provide community members with detailed information about proposed projects and potential impacts so they can make informed decisions on individual or collective actions. Their recognition of local expertise is grounded in the belief that people who live with the daily impacts of fossil fuel extraction should be treated with the utmost respect. Center for Coalfield Justice's work is informed and directed by how local people think these industries should be held accountable for impacts. By blending organizing and legal work, we seek to create an expanded set of options for achieving justice than might be produced by following solely a legal or organizing approach.
Lisa DePaoli is an ecological anthropologist whose interest in the relationship between humans and nature has brought her from teaching and research to doing applied work. She is the outreach coordinator for the Center for Coalfield Justice, working with communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction in Appalachia, witnessing political ecology at work in real life once again. She is excited to be a part of the Rural Cinema program and looking forward to engaging CCJ members and supporters with the materials!
Kristen Locy graduated from Allegheny College in 2018 with a degree in Environmental Studies. After a brief stint in Scotland working on a sheep farm, she came back home to Washington County, Pennsylvania to work for the Center for Coalfield Justice in the summer of 2019. Her passion lies in environmental justice and storytelling. Photographs and documentaries have inspired her activism since she was a child and she is excited to help to inspire others through the Rural Cinema initiative.
Natasha Léger is the Executive Director of Citizens For A Healthy Community (CHC). Her work in empowering the community has led to withdrawal of projects and leasing proposals that threaten the community, and widespread resistance to oil and gas development in the North Fork Valley, which serves a unique role in Colorado’s food supply, recreation economy, and biodiversity. She is an international trade attorney, turned independent business consultant, turned editor of a location intelligence magazine, turned author, turned accidental activist.
Marissa Mommaerts serves as Project Assistant for CHC. She also serves as Director of Programs for Transition US, a network of communities transitioning away from fossil fuel dependence toward local resilience. She previously worked for the Post Carbon Institute and The Aspen Institute on communications projects related to sustainable development. Marissa has a Master's Degree in International Public Affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she co-founded a sustainable development project in partnership with UW students and an island community in Lake Victoria, Uganda. She is also a writer (madmillennials.wordpress.com) and speaker on the topics of community resilience and sustainable global development, as well as an avid gardener, homesteader, community organizer, and activist.
Good Stewards of Rockingham is a grassroots environmental organization committed to protecting their region from polluting industry. Good Stewards founded the first Dan Riverkeeper in mid 2019 to further their protective reach into their vast water resources and support community rights to a clean environment.
The Iniciativa de EcoDesarrollo de la Bahia de Jobos (IDEBAJO) is an environmental organizing support hub for various grassroots groups in the Jobos Bay area of southeastern Puerto Rico. Members are committed to environmental, climate, and energy justice, rooftop community solar, supporting youth leaders, and other capacity-building and anti-pollution efforts. Rural Cinema participants are members of IDEBAJO and also have affiliations with the Casa Comunitaria de Medios/Community Media House. This communication project focuses on the creation of audiovisual media to advance popular education. The House also advocates for different mutual aid initiatives, rooted in community empowerment.
Hery Colón is a 25-year-old resident of Salinas, Puerto Rico and is passionate about audiovisual production. He also facilitates community engagement in the Casa Comunitaria de Medios, through art and other community activities.
Menīkānaehkem, Inc is a non-profit organization located on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin. Much of Menīkānaehkem is operated by indigenous organizers who take the lead on a number of different initiatives that Menīkānaehkem works on. Menīkānaehkem is driven to promote a cultural way of life while revitalizing indigenous identity and language.
Menīkānaehkem has the following initiatives: Women's Leadership Cohort, Energy Sovereignty, Back 40 Mine, Food Sovereignty, Culture Group, Youth Leadership Cohort, and Menominee Men. Menīkānaehkem works on bringing unity to their community by using hearts and minds as one.
Maria L. Haskins, Boozhoo, Nayezhigookwe is an activist and community organizer with Menīkānaehkem, Inc. Maria has earned her masters degree in social work and has worked in different level positions where she has been able to see the injustices that occur within her community and people. Maria is using the experience she has gained with her career to advocate for social and environmental justice focusing primarily on indigenous people.
Founded in 2003 out of Arctic Village, Alaska, Native Movement's initial campaign was to help build a collective Alaska Native voice for the recognition of Indigenous hunting and fishing rights. By 2007 Native Movement had become formally incorporated as a 501c3 non-profit and grown to a west-coast collective. Native Movement has provided leadership and support for grassroots-led projects that endeavor to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ rights, the rights of Mother Earth, and the building of healthy and sustainable communities for all. They believe in building equitable and respectful community organizing practices, getting to the root of the matter, uplifting intersectionality, and furthering a healing path. Understanding the impacts of the power and privilege structures of colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism is essential. Native Movement also recognizes that committing to healing practices both in our work and our lives is essential to the longevity and joy of the work before us.
Native Movement trainings, workshops, and camps are not exclusive to Indigenous peoples; rather their leadership model is shaped from an Indigenous worldview, which emphasizes deep acknowledgment of place-based knowledge and the joy and responsibility of building community.
Sara Siqiñiq Thomas is raising her family in Utqiaġvik, AK, her home since she was 10 years old. Since completing a B.A. in International Relations at the University of Hawaii Mānoa, she has worked in education, stakeholder relations for oil and gas, and workforce development. Through the UAF Rural Development M.A. program she figured out how to combine her passions: community-building around land, air, and water for community wellness, and Iñupiaq language and culture revitalization.
Rural Organizing Project (ROP) is a statewide organization that supports a multi-issue, rural-centered, grassroots base of over 65 groups across small-town, rural, and frontier Oregon. ROP works to build and support a shared standard of human dignity: the belief in the equal worth of all people, the need for equal access to justice, and the right to self-determination. Their mission is to strengthen the skills, resources, and vision of primary leadership in local autonomous human dignity groups with a goal of keeping such groups a vibrant source for a just democracy.
