Film Screening & Panel Discussion

 

Please join us for a FREE screening of INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE (Christine Choy , Cynthia Maurizio, 1978), DARK CELL HARLEM FARM (Alex Johnston, 2022), ABOLITIONIST AFFIRMATIONS 1 & 2 (Saeedah Cook, 2021) co-presented by Solidarity Media Network and Third World Newsreel.

 

"What we have today in terms of our jails and prisons cannot exist. Sometimes when I look around them I like to imagine them as a museum. People won't believe we did this someday." -Franklin Bynum

 

INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE (Christine Choy , Cynthia Maurizio, 1978, 21 minutes)

This film exposes the daily humiliation regularly faced by women in U.S. prisons using firsthand accounts of inmates at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women and the Correctional Institute for Women at Riker's Island, New York. How does a woman cope with such common occurences as illness, pregnancy and family conflicts when she is sent away to prison? At the North Carolina Correctional Center for Womena and the Correctional Institute for Women at Rikers Island, a number of women answer these questions quite candidly. Provocative interviews with these women reveal the anger and frustrations of daily life behid bars. We hear testimonies from women who have suffered from unnecessary miscarriages and improper medical care. We catch glimpses of inhumane conditions ranging from feudal wages and overcrowded cell block to lack of nutritional meals in the cafeteria. INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE follows women demanding better meals and realistic job training: institutionalized injustices against them are clarified disrupting our conventional view of women behind bars. In spite of the realities of their oppression, their optimism and strength is insurmountable.

 

DARK CELL HARLEM FARM (Alex Johnston, 2022, 26 minutes)

Set against the backdrop of the long and brutal history of the Texas prison system–from Juneteenth to Covid–Dark Cell Harlem Farm explores the death by suffocation of eight Black men at a prison plantation in 1913. Combining readings of primary source materials and personal reflections by formerly incarcerated individuals, footage of the prison landscapes where the incident took place, a series of graphical interventions and excavations, and a haunting original score by composer (and Texas native) Zachary James Watkins, the film makes an urgent and uncompromising argument for the impossibility of prison reform and the necessity of prison abolition.

 

ABOLITIONIST AFFIRMATIONS 1& 2 (Saeedah Cook, 2021, 2 min)

Abolition Affirmations is a really straight forward project, exactly what it sounds like a compilation of tiny video motivations. It is visual self talk. The reality is that film itself can’t do much to change people’s material conditions. People’s power is needed to change our material realities. The affirmation at best can power the people’s imagination to think about a world without prison, and also keep people ignited until the next fight.

Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Saeedah Cook, No Brooklyn Jail, and Janavi Janakiraman (Justice Initiatives at BPL), moderated by Emily Rose Apter (Solidarity Media Network). 

 

Runtime: 49 minutes 

 

Founded in 2025, Solidarity Media Network is  working to build a more just society through intentional and care-centered media production and circulation. We produce creator-centered content made by systems-impacted media makers. We license and circulate media that supports infrastructures of care. We provide job opportunities and professional development support for  media makers who are returning home after incarceration.

 

Since 1968, Third World Newsreel (TWN) has advanced movement storytelling and media arts for cultural and social justice. We champion the self-representation of historically marginalized communities—including Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, Pacific Islander, African, Middle Eastern, Mixed/Multiracial, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ individuals—through diverse genres and forms of media, such as documentary, experimental, and fiction. Our comprehensive support includes hands-on training, fiscal sponsorship, educational distribution, and preservation, all designed to advance cultural justice and societal change.