Sing Sing Film Highlights The Need For Arts And Dignity In America’s Prison System

“This is probably one of Colman Domingo’s greatest works,” an audience member said as the closing credits rolled at the mid-August Washington, D.C. premiere of Sing Sing, now available for theater audiences globally.

Sing Sing, a film that’s based on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at the now-decommissioned Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison in Ossining, New York, primarily revolves around a group of inmates creating theatrical stage shows.

Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a returning citizen and one-time RTA participant, describes Sing Sing as a real-time look back in time at the program’s impact on his life and that of other returning citizens. In the film, Domingo plays Maclin while Maclin co-stars as an aggressive inmate that Domingo’s character recruits.

“We don’t ever deny the barbarism, atrocities and violence that can go on in prison,” Maclin said. “But what we wanted to show is that that’s not the only thing that goes on in prison.”

Sing Sing premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and in theaters worldwide over Labor Day Weekend. This first-of-its-kind film shows what can happen when rehabilitation narratives are centered over those that speak to the harsher aspects of incarceration. s.

With a cast of formerly incarcerated men acting alongside Domingo, Sing Sing highlights artist programs as part of a rehabilitation model that centers the human dignity of those behind bars and promotes the power of personal healing to decrease recidivism.

The Vera Institute of Justice says that approximately 1.8 million people were incarcerated in the United States in 2023, a 500% increase from 1980.

The business of incarceration costs American taxpayers more than $33 billion a year, becoming so significant that the general public often loses sight of inmates’ humanity.

While popular movies and shows, such as Oz, Shawshank Redemption and 60 Days In, show the harsh reality of life behind prison walls, Ana Zamora, founder of The Just Trust, believes movies like Sing Sing are critical to stopping mass criminalization and mass incarceration in the United States.

“Sing Sing is an example of excellent storytelling that helps us evolve the narratives that we all hold about committing crimes and people in prison,” Zamora said. “It allows us to marry culture change and policy change together.”

Zamora founded The Just Trust in 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to develop solutions for the ongoing crises of public safety and mass incarceration. The Just Trust partnered with A24, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar and Monique Walton to bring Sing Sing to big and small screenings throughout the United States, connecting local criminal justice reform partners to a storyline that shows what’s possible with rehabilitation at the center.

“It is easy for us to put people who have committed crimes and people who are in prison into a box, and to hold them in that box requires us to strip them of their humanity,” said Zamora, a former ACLU criminal justice director. “When we humanize people who have committed crimes and who have been in the prison system, that allows us to remember that part of being human is the unique potential to change and grow.”

RTA shifts away from punishment, and toward human dignity, with great success. The program’s website shows that fewer than 3% of RTA participants return to prison, compared to the national recidivism rate of more than 60%.

The film, which was shot over 19 days across several decommissioned correctional facilities, including Sing Sing, takes audiences on a journey as RTA participants are preparing for their new production.

Divine G, who’s incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit, recruits new members, one of whom is the aggressive inmate played by Malcin. Throughout the film, audience members see inmates tapping into difficult emotions, engaging in uncomfortable conversations and connecting in a way uncommon for modern Hollywood depictions of mass incarceration.

Malcin said that these are all real-life elements of the RTA programs, as experienced in real life and on the big screen.

“Inside, the program represented a safe space, somewhere I could express myself without being judged, somewhere where my opinion was valued and that my thought mattered,” Malcin said as he reflected on RTA’s impact throughout his incarceration.

“The people in prison are people, they are human beings. They have loved ones. They have ambitions. They have goals. They have sorrows. They have pain,” Malcin continued. “They are like everyone else.”

That sentiment connects the film to the real-life program.

The inclusion of former Sing Sing inmates as actors and the use of the actual facility sets the stage for the raw emotion and honest acting that bleeds through the screen and makes the film believable for audiences. Walton, producer of Sing Sing, believes this feeling comes from the film’s community-based filmmaking approach guided by mutual respect, empathy and compassion.

“Working with actors who are RTA alumni, who bring not only their performance but their lived experience and their stories to the screen, presented the natural opportunity to ensure that the ownership of the film and where stakeholders in its creation,” Walton said. “This felt like the best way to structure this production.”

Unlike other films produced this year, Sing Sing’s community-based approach does away with the hierarchy of the standard movie set. It creates equitable ownership and a pay structure in which all cast and crew members, based on overall production involvement, are paid the same daily salary in exchange for a percentage of the equity.

Walton said she also worked tirelessly to ensure the film crew was based locally.

“If you authentically involve the community, you get to tell a story that is even more relatable, authentic and true,” Walton said. “When producing a film like this, you are looking for the truth, and this process allows us to shape and frame a creative process with the involvement of the people who have lived it.”

Since all the alumni cast members had spent some time at Sing Sing, Walton stationed mental health professionals on set at the now decommissioned official prisoner intake facility. She deemed this move necessary,stating that authentic emotions of the cast members’ incarceration shaped the production.

“Our alumni cast remarkably used the creative process itself as therapy; being on set was therapeutic,” Walton said. “Some shared that there was some newfound agency in being able to wander around the prison and open doors and go home like at the end of the day.”

That reality doesn’t exist for the RTA alumni’s approximately 1.8 million counterparts who remain incarcerated throughout the United States.

To those still behind bars, Malcin issues a reminder. “We are so much bigger than anything we have done wrong,” he said.

Zamora said that message keeps her organization fighting for prison reform. So far, The Just Trust and its grantees have hosted screenings of Sing Sing in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Asheville, North Carolina; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Charleston, West Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

“Sing Sing shows a journey of rehabilitation and growth and the possibility of rehabilitation and development, and through this very innovative arts program, and I think that makes the film beautiful, really poignant,” Zamora said. “We can’t just focus on changing laws and policy. We also have to address the fact that culture needs to shift and evolve on these issues as well for us to make durable scales change in the policy arena.”

This post was originally published on here