Re-Visions of Abolition
About the film
Editor & Co-Producer: Cameron Granadino
Assistant Producer: Jolie Chea
Release date: 2011
Editor of Re-Visions: Spencer Lee
Re-Visions release date: 2021
Part I “Breaking down the Prison Industrial Complex” provides a critical exposé of the carceral culture, the war on drugs, and the connections between slavery, capitalism and the prison industrial complex (43 mins.)
Part II “Abolition: Past, Present & Future” moves beyond criticism, and offers an examples of prison and police abolition in practice. This film tells the history of Critical Resistance from 1998 to 2008, with scholars and activists explaining reasons for the abolition of violent state systems versus their reform. (55 mins)
Watch the trailer
The direct catalyst for this film was a video project, undertaken by Cameo Watkins and Patricia Naqi. As interns with the L.E.A.D. Project, (a sub-project of Critical Resistance, Los Angeles) they conducted video interviews with community members in Watts about their experiences with police violence. After the 10th Anniversary Critical Resistance Conference, Setsu Shigematsu, Jolie Chea, Kai M. Green and Cameron Granadino and other students at UCR decided to embark on a new film project about the politics of prison abolition, as an urgent alternative to the failure of the criminal legal system.
Re-Visions of Abolition
This film was updated in 2021.