Inside this maximum security prison, a film festival shows ‘a little bit of healing’

At the maximum-security Sing Sing prison, about 40 miles north of New York City, the campus chapel was bustling with activity on a recent Thursday. Guests and attendees of the first-ever Sing Sing Film Festival wore name tags and chatted excitedly among themselves as an array of snacks lay on a table in front of the altar.

It looked like any other film festival, and if you didn’t notice that some of the men in the room were wearing green pants, you might forget that many of today’s guests and participants were in prison.

“I’ve never been a part of a film festival. I’ve never really seen it, didn’t really think, you know, it was possible for people who grew up the way we grow up,” said Michael Hoffler, who is incarcerated at Sing Sing and served on the festival jury with four other men, also imprisoned.

The five documentaries selected to play at the festival all dealt in some way with the criminal justice system – a system the jury knew well. The program was chaired by The Marshall Projecta nonprofit criminal justice newsroom that hired a filmmaker to train the men on how to judge technical aspects like storytelling and cinematography. And the men were encouraged to use their experiences with the criminal justice system to assess the authenticity of the films.

“We wanted to give incarcerated people the opportunity to use their lived experience in a positive way to research and watch these films. To say, ‘Hey, this is authentic or it’s not,'” said Lawrence Bartley, a driving force behind the event and a person who had previously been imprisoned at Sing Sing. After his release in 2018, he joined The Marshall Projectwhere he does print and video journalism.

Bartley hoped that the Sing Sing Film Festival would highlight the thoughts and feelings of those communities that tend to underestimate.

“They’re human beings. They’re human beings with hopes and dreams and desires, just like everybody else,” he said.

That humanity also shone through in the films. As in For our children from 2022, which centers on women seeking justice for their sons who had been victims of police brutality. Alex Aguilar, an alternate juror, said the film brought him back to his childhood in Long Island, NY

“I really grew up thinking it was normal for the police to pick you up, take you out of your car, search your car if they wanted to. They could beat you up,” he said.

And the 2024s Daughters — a film that follows the lives of four young girls as they prepare for a father-daughter dance in a Washington, DC prison — Hoffler recalled the relationship he has with his own children.

“Being incarcerated doesn’t absolve us of our responsibility as a parent. We did what we did, but we still have a responsibility to help raise these children that we left behind,” Hoffler said.

For Jonathan Mills – at 61 the oldest of the jury members – watching the films and discussing them with the other men was therapeutic.

“It’s a little bit healing and it helped me develop my better social skills,” he said.

The Sing Sing festival was inspired by the first ever film festival for incarcerated men held at California’s San Quentin State Prison in early October.

“What these shows do — they’re an excuse for closeness. They bring people from different worlds together,” said Rahsaan Thomas, who co-founded the San Quentin Festival and is known for hosting the award-winning podcast Ear congestion about life in prison.

This closeness was on full display as guests, jurors and other incarcerated men mingled for hours before the actual program began. All participants had to surrender their phones. Without a watch, your only sense of time passing came from the changing light peeking through the stained glass windows.

This proximity also allowed for unexpected interactions even during the program, such as when an incarcerated man stood up to ask a question about prison resources to Daniel Martuscello, the commissioner of the New York State Department. Martuscello stepped up to a microphone and answered.

“We’re going to have to figure out the personnel thing, because without that we can’t do all the things we do,” he said. “There are a lot of ideas out there, and I wouldn’t say no, at the first blush, to any of the ideas that are out there.”

More than 17% of staff positions at Sing Sing are currently vacant, according to data from Correctional Association of New York.

The Sing Sing festival program also featured screenings of three short films and concluded with a Q&A between the five jurors and Mindy Goldberg, a producer of Daughtersand Contessa Gayles, director of Songs from the hole. The latter film, about an imprisoned musician who processes his brother’s death as well as his own past, took the festival’s top prize. Speaking after the program, Gayles said she made the film for the incarcerated.

“Every time we’ve had a film festival screened outside, we’ve made sure, no matter what city we’re in, that we also bring the film into a prison,” she said. “And to have the jury here made up of incarcerated people and for them to honor us with the award means everything.”

Kiki Weston, who along with Lawrence Bartley helped organize the event, hopes this festival is the first of many at Sing Sing and beyond.

“I would love to have this in every state,” she said. “I would love to have it in one of our women’s facilities just to give women access to this type of thing. So I’d love it to be everywhere. And I don’t think it’s too far. Like it’s not too far-fetched to dream that big, I just think it can happen.”

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