Attica (Cinda Firestone, 1974, 80min.)
Join us on Friday September 10, at approximately 8PM EDT, for a #SidewalkCinema screening of Attica (Cinda Firestone, 1974, 80 min).
This film will be screening as part of the series Abolition Now! 50 Years of the Attica Prison Uprising curated by Emily Apter. Co-presented by Maysles Documentary Center and Third World Newsreel and in collaboration with Attica Is All of Us, The Freedom Archives, and the Documentary Forum at CCNY.
About the film:
Social unrest in the United States hit a boiling point on September 9, 1971, when inmates at Attica State Prison—after months of protesting inhumane living conditions—revolted, seizing part of the prison and taking 35 hostages. The uprising resulted in the death of 43 people after troopers were called in to suppress the rioters. Three years later, Cinda Firestone released this monumental investigation of the rebellion and its aftermath, piecing together documentary footage of the occupation and ensuing assault with video from the McKay Commission hearings that criticized Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller’s handling of the incident and firsthand interviews with prisoners discharged after the event.
Unavailable for 33 years, Attica is still a sobering and revealing look into the heart of American justice, weighing the costs of institutional dishonesty and abuses of power against the price some will pay to retain human dignity.
*The original film-to-film preservation of ATTICA was done with support from the Women’s Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film & Television.
