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Followed by a Q&A With Director Stanley Nelson, facilitated by filmmaker Dawn Porter (GOOD TROUBLE: JOHN LEWIS)
2022 ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE – Best Documentary Feature. Attica details the five-day prison rebellion that transpired in the fall of 1971 in upstate New York and still stands as the largest and deadliest the country has ever witnessed. More than a simple recounting of the five days of rebellion, ATTICA will also offer a broader understanding of the Attica tragedy in the crosscurrents of politics, race, power and punishment during the early 1970s. Through expert voices and archival images of urban and suburban life, the film explores the tensions between a young, radicalized population of mostly Black and Latino inmates, and correctional officers from a predominately white company town, where the Attica prison was the primary employer for generations of families. ATTICA examines inmates’ demands for recognition of their humanity at the culmination of a moment where racial justice activists embraced prisoner rights as an extension of their fight for civil rights.
“A forthright indictment of the institutional racism and human rights abuses in the American penal system at the time.”
-Screen International
“It’s a worthy – and sadly timely – remembrance of a singular event whose ghosts continue to haunt us.”
-Washington Post
Stanley Nelson is one of the foremost chroniclers of the African American experience working in nonfiction film today. His films, many of which have aired on PBS, combine compelling narratives with rich and deeply researched historical detail, shining new light on both familiar and under-explored aspects of the American past. Mr. Nelson’s film, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016), is arguably the first comprehensive feature length historical documentary portrait of that iconic organization, as well as an extremely timely look at an earlier phase of black activism around police violence in African American communities. The film was recently nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. Nelson’s two previous films, Freedom Summer (2014) and Freedom Riders (2010), took a fresh look at multiracial efforts to register black voters and desegregate public transportation facilities in the Jim Crow South, critical events in the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s. Nelson’s 2003 film The Murder of Emmett Till, about the brutal killing of a fourteen-year-old African American boy in Mississippi in 1955, an event that had a galvanizing effect on the mid-century civil rights movement, uncovered new eyewitnesses to the crime and helped prompt the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen the case.
Other notable Nelson films include the Emmy-nominated The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999), a sweeping portrait of over a century of independent black journalism; Two Dollars and a Dream (1989), a biography of Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made African American female millionaire; Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple (2006), a riveting account of how cult leader Jim Jones led more than 900 followers to commit mass suicide in a remote corner of northwestern Guyana in 1978; Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2000) a moving account of the life of the controversial early twentieth-century black nationalist; and A Place of Our Own (2004), a remarkable and revealing portrait of the upper middle-class African American resort community of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, as well as a very personal portrait of Nelson’s sometimes difficult relationship with his father. In 2000, Mr. Nelson, along with his wife, Marcia A. Smith, founded Firelight Media, a nonprofit production company dedicated to using historical film to advance contemporary social justice causes, and to mentoring, inspiring, and training a new generation of diverse young filmmakers committed to advancing underrepresented stories.
Nelson, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, was awarded an individual Peabody for his body of work in May of 2016. He has received numerous honors over the course of his career, including five Primetime Emmy Awards and the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences. In 2013, Nelson received the National Medal in the Humanities from President Barack Obama.
Dawn Porter is an award-winning filmmaker whose 2013 documentary, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award, the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. The film broadcast on HBO in July 2013 and has been used to engage local communities about indigent defense, the U.S. justice system and socioeconomic influences on crime.
Dawn’s other films include Spies of Mississippi (2014, PBS) and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a documentary film chronicling President Obama’s program to help young men and boys of color succeed. Dawn interviewed President Obama for the film, which aired nationally on The Discovery Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2015.
Dawn is a Keppler Speaker. She has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and is a returning guest on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show.
Prior to her work as a filmmaker, Dawn was director of standards and practices at ABC News and vice president of standard and practices at A&E Television Networks. She graduated from Swarthmore College and Georgetown Law Center and practiced law at the firm of Baker & Hostetler for five years.
