The first time I spoke to an incarcerated filmmaker was four years ago, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, while interviewing participants and organizers of rehabilitative arts programs at California’s San Quentin State Prison. I was following a story about how the loss of these arts programs was impacting prisoners, focusing on San Quentin’s filmmaking program, then called FirstWatch, now ForwardThis. Founded and run by incarcerated men, participants in the program teach themselves how to operate cameras and editing software in order to create short films about their experiences. The only program of its kind in any prison in the country, its work is unique in the visual glimpse of incarcerated life that it provides to outside viewers. What should have been an in-person experience with funded travel had become a largely self-guided, fully remote endeavor—and I had chosen to report on perhaps the most locked-down population in the country.
The impact of the pandemic on prisons across the U.S. was staggering. According to one study, in the first year of the pandemic, incarcerated people were infected by COVID at a rate five to six times higher than the general population’s; they were dying at more than double the rate.
The mental and emotional effects of COVID on incarcerated populations were deeply alarming as well. At San Quentin, prisoners were kept in their cells for 23 hours a day. Visits from family and friends were suspended, and access to phone calls was severely limited. For over a year, rehabilitative programming was shut down as well.
Arts programs like FirstWatch operate on the assumption that the purpose of incarceration should be rehabilitation rather than punishment. They have been proven to change participants’ behavior, develop their senses of self, and provide them with skills for life upon release. In 2020, though, these programs were in crisis. No one knew how they would recover—or what they would look like if and when they returned. But Dr. Larry Brewster, a professor and advocate for prison arts programs, seemed confident: “I personally think that the programs will flourish again.”
His words proved to be beautifully true: this past October, San Quentin hosted the inaugural San Quentin Film Festival. The brainchild of Cori Thomas—an award-winning playwright, author, and screenwriter—and Rahsaan “New York” Thomas (no relation)—a filmmaker, writer, and founder of the nonprofit organization Empowerment Avenue who was formerly incarcerated at San Quentin—SQFF is the first film festival ever held inside a U.S. prison. In 2020, the prison had been in lockdown; four years later, incarcerated filmmakers, film industry talents, press, and other guests crowded inside for two days of screenings, panels, and awards presentations.
Documentary and narrative shorts made by currently and formerly incarcerated filmmakers were judged by a jury of industry professionals, including actors Jeffrey Wright, Mary Louise Parker, and Billy Crudup; Sing Sing director Greg Kwedar; former president of HBO Films Ken Amato; and Orange Is the New Black author Piper Kerman. An Inside Jury judged a lineup of features about the justice system, made by filmmakers who have never been incarcerated. Filmmakers also engaged in panels and Q&As, some moderated by celebrities like actress Kerry Washington and comedian W. Kamau Bell. Seeing industry figures take an active and genuine interest in something like the San Quentin Film Festival, especially during the time of year when more glamorous and prestigious festivals tend to fill the headlines, is encouraging. But there’s also a bittersweet juxtaposition between the two kinds of filmmakers that SQFF hosted: those who went to film school, and those who taught themselves how to use a camera by reading books from a prison library—those who are dressed by designers for their film premieres, and those who introduced their film while wearing the same state-issued blue shirt as the day before.
As attendance at the prison was limited, I attended the festival virtually, watching films on my laptop by way of a screening portal that recalled the set-up for virtual editions of lockdown-era festivals. In a way, it felt like a fitting setting in which to experience these films: limited access to what others were experiencing in real life, made available only through (at times) frustrating, error-prone technology. It’s the barest fraction of what these incarcerated filmmakers have to experience every day, hearing about momentous cultural events or loved ones’ lives through a timed and monitored phone call or a media center laptop screen. At the same time, a viewing experience is informed by the actual space in which it occurs. I wonder if entering through San Quentin’s gates, passing through a metal detector, and staring up at the barbed wire ringing the courtyard would have served as a physical reminder of how much still separates these incarcerated artists from the rest of the world; a film can provide a window from inside to outside but not an open door. What additional stories would I have heard while mingling with attendees and participants before a screening? What would I have smelled and tasted? (SQFF’s limited budget didn’t allow for catered food; those serving time and those visiting alike ate lunch from makeshift sandwich kits.) Would it have been refreshing to leave my cell phone at the door, as was required, and experience one of the only screening venues in the world entirely free from the distraction of phone alarms or someone scrolling social media a seat over? Or would I have felt limited by a lack of contact with the outside world and then subsequently reminded that, in most prisons, possession of a contraband cell phone is seen as both a liability and a necessity?
I wish, after several years of following the work of San Quentin’s film program, that I could have met these filmmakers face to face and seen their films presented in the same physical space that has informed the way they see the world. And I wish I could have heard the whoops and applause that shook the room when it was announced that incarcerated filmmaker Raheem Ballard, who had missed the screening of his short film Dying Alone because he was facing the parole board, had just been granted his release.
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Back in 2020, Thanh Tran, an incarcerated filmmaker at San Quentin with whom I was speaking, finally managed to call me on a preloaded prison phone account in the limited window that he could leave his cell. He told me in sobering detail about his experience contracting COVID, his friends who had died, and how invisible they felt to the outside world. “If FirstWatch were open right now,” Thanh said, “we’d be able to show a different side, to share a different story.” It was a recurring plea, no matter what sources I read or who I talked to. Yes, arts programs like FirstWatch/ForwardThis contribute to decreased recidivism rates. Yes, they train participants in practical skills they can use to build a reformed life after prison. But, vitally, they also allow incarcerated people to tell their own stories on their own terms, reframing what those of us on the outside think we know about the prison experience.
Most of the films at SQFF engaged with such an idea in one of two ways: by portraying the unseen and underseen (what those on the outside don’t know about incarceration), and by challenging common narratives (what those on the outside think we know about incarceration, plus how those on the inside conceptualize themselves). As a whole, SQFF suggests an alternate medium through which to examine incarceration. Our nation’s carceral system is founded upon policy decisions, wealth inequality, racial privilege, and the ripple effects of slavery and other forms of centuries-long oppression. But, as SQFF makes clear, it is also rooted in narrative and image—the stories we tell ourselves about what kind of people we incarcerate and how those people deserve to be treated; who we allow to pick up a pen or a camera; what we choose to see and what we look away from.
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Built in the early 1850s by the men and women who would soon be incarcerated there, San Quentin Rehabilitation Center is California’s oldest correctional facility. Until March 2023, it was known as San Quentin State Prison; the name change is part of a larger, ongoing plan by Governor Gavin Newsom and a San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council to transform “the oldest and most notorious prison in California […] into a rehabilitation center focused on improving public safety.”
Such a reputation could make it easy to craft a narrative about San Quentin and those incarcerated there, but the actual story is far more complex; the prison embodies many of the contradictions inherent in our criminal justice system. San Quentin is unique among prisons in the U.S. for the rehabilitative programming it offers—from educational classes and treatment programs to theater troupes, creative writing groups, a baseball team, and its one-of-a-kind media center, home to podcasts, a newspaper, and the prison’s filmmaking program. At the festival, a short film, Becoming ForwardThis, provided a brief overview of the program’s evolution, and boasted that San Quentin’s media center has a 0% recidivism rate. Its participants contributed several submissions to the festival, including Healing Through Hula, a moving documentary by participant Louis Sale about his journey to rediscover his Hawaiian heritage and the art of hula while incarcerated, despite rampant violence and toxic masculinity in prison that make such a practice taboo. In the end credits, Sale dedicates the film to the man he killed, writing, “I think about you every day, and it empowers me to do better.” His film and the team’s other films are a resounding testament to the hard work of rehabilitation and repair occurring at San Quentin.
But not all those incarcerated at San Quentin have been afforded such an opportunity. Many of the programs have extensive waitlists—not because they lack volunteers, but because the spaces in which they meet are not big enough for the number of interested participants. (San Quentin has long dealt with extreme overcrowding.) And, until recently, the prison housed the state’s only death row for men.
At the festival, French director Gabriella Kessler’s documentary The Prison Show illustrated the isolating reality of death row, where prisoners are barely allowed a phone call, let alone the opportunity to participate in rehabilitation of any sort. The film follows a radio show founded by activist Ray Hill that airs weekly in Houston, Texas, and provides a point of connection between the outside world and incarcerated people, who listen for news, discussions on criminal justice issues, and the sound of their loved ones’ voices. On death row, inmates are allowed only one phone call every 90 days, so family members call in to the show to leave more frequent messages. Members of the show’s staff also attend and broadcast live at the executions in the state to call attention to the continued operation of the death penalty. Although these parts of the broadcast are not included in Kessler’s film, even the idea of them seems, at first, inhumane—something private and morbid. But the radio show intends to give voice and sound to the most silent parts of the criminal justice system.
Through her film’s visual language, Kessler attempts to create an understanding of imprisonment, even when not filming inside a prison. She repeatedly frames shots through the lattices of chain link fences, films the show’s volunteers in tight, claustrophobic close-ups, and employs point-of-view shots from cars driving on never-ending roads, an illustration of the infinite futility of death row. Other films shown used similar techniques to convey incarceration, the mileage of which varies. Their attempts to make a non-incarcerated audience understand the prison experience feels limited, retreading visual cues that are so familiar that they have lost some of their impact. I notice that such a tendency is more prevalent in the features made by filmmakers who have never been incarcerated than the short films made by those who have
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Many of the festival’s films depict elements of the prison experience that remain largely unseen by the public: the dehumanization inherent in solitary confinement (The Strike), the medical neglect experienced by those incarcerated with terminal illness and refused compassionate release (Dying Alone), the epidemic of unemployment and homelessness that greet prisoners upon release (Unhoused and Unseen). Most of the films addressed the narratives, internal and external, that come to define those impacted by the system. Ben Lear, Gretel Truong, and April Grayson’s narrative short Little April imagines an incarcerated woman who is taken on a trippy, magical motorcycle journey back to her childhood where she has the revelation that her experiences are more the result of a system that has failed her than her own fault. Two Wolves, directed by Shannon Michael Ross and Kaleigh Atkinson, mixes animation, archival A/V material, singing, and spoken word poetry with the refrain, “They say, so we say…” to probe how common cultural narratives about the incarcerated stunt their sense of self and their potential for rehabilitation.
SQFF’s films transcend genre and style, expanding beyond what we might think of as a “prison film.” But as I made my way through the lineup, I wondered if all of them would comment so seriously on incarceration. On the one hand, it made sense to me that such formative experiences would come to the forefront of all these filmmakers’ works. I thought of former FirstWatch participant Adamu Chan who, after being granted his release in October 2020, told me he planned to continue to use the skills he had acquired at San Quentin. “Whether it’s media or the arts,” he said, “I want to use that experience to continue to highlight things that are going on inside of the prison.” Two and a half years after his release, his film What These Walls Won’t Hold won Best Documentary, Mid-Length at the San Francisco International Film Festival. His short How We Heal Each Other: Ny Nourn, about the co-director of the Bay Area’s Asian Prisoner Support Committee, played at SQFF. But on the other hand, the festival didn’t explicitly require submissions to be about prison. How would an incarcerated filmmaker approach a wholly different topic or genre? As a viewer, would I read the film through a certain lens anyway?
Paranormal Patrol, a narrative short directed by Ryan Pagan and made by the ForwardThis team, was perhaps the only comedy in the entire festival lineup. A mockumentary in the key of Ghostbusters, it assumes that an institution as old as San Quentin, one that has borne witness to almost two centuries of death, is haunted. A fictional team of supernatural investigators, played by program participants, is on call in the prison for any unusual disturbances. When they are called to a cell to investigate a ghostly prank and a suspiciously haunted object, hijinks ensue. The team briefly becomes trapped inside San Quentin’s dungeon, and they discover their arrogant team leader (Reymundo, Big Deal Lead Investigator) is actually the sinister poltergeist responsible for these mysterious occurrences.
The film’s tone is wholeheartedly comedic, mimicking mockumentaries and horror spoofs. The handheld camerawork and talking head interviews rhyme, perhaps intentionally, with the festival’s other documentaries, but to the opposite effect—where the other films encourage sober reflection, this one invites laughter. It would be easy to analyze Paranormal Patrol in the vein of those films, to assume that all work by incarcerated filmmakers is saying something serious about the nature of their experiences. But Paranormal Patrol invites an opposite reading. A childlike creativity permeates each frame. The filmmakers-turned-actors ham it up for the camera, easily embracing the broadly sketched tropes of their characters—the locked-in hacker, the cocky but inept team leader, the bespectacled brains of the operation. The production values are, by necessity, playfully makeshift, given the limited resources the filmmakers have at hand. The Ghostbusters-esque outfits that the patrol team dons are, in actuality, full body PPE suits; the cursed object is a yellow foam ball with a Pentagram drawn on it. I was reminded of the home movies my friends and I would make together in middle school, fashioning costumes and props from whatever we had at hand, gleefully applying ketchup to our faces to look like blood.
I found myself grinning, not only at the film’s jokes but also at the joyful collaboration of its filmmakers, the self-aware silliness of its premise, and the palpable sense of emotional lightness, despite the film’s prison setting. I thought of Adnan Khan, one of the founders of San Quentin’s filmmaking program, and what he had told me in 2020 when I asked him about the importance of an outside audience watching the team’s films: “You get to see their laugh lines. People don’t think people incarcerated have laugh lines.”
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As 2024’s gauntlet of film festivals comes to an end, and as Oscar prognosticators arrange and rearrange their ballots, as starry new releases vie for box office numbers, I hope to sit for a little while longer with this small group of films and the new narratives and images, both sobering and hopeful, that they provide. In our increasingly accusatory, fearful, and unforgiving world, these filmmakers’ efforts to use their art as a means of repair and rehabilitation from their past deeds seems both harder and more necessary than ever. In the wake of personal acts of destruction, they have chosen to commit themselves to intentional acts of creation.