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San Quentin Film Festival Shows Historic Prison's Transformation

The first-ever San Quentin Film Festival in California’s oldest prison was not glamorous. The inmates who screened their films in front of a crowd dotted with Hollywood bigwigs last week could not have been more thrilled, the New York Times reports. “Tribeca, eat your heart out!” said Dante Jones, director of “Unhoused and Unseen,” a documentary about how incarceration and homelessness are intertwined. Jones, 41, has been imprisoned for 17 years for attempted murder after he shot a nemesis in the jaw. When he was first incarcerated, he could never have imagined that power players would enter the thick metal gates of San Quentin to meet him and his fellow inmates.


Among the attendees were Kerry Washington, star of the TV drama “Scandal,” and Jerry Seinfeld and W. Kamau Bell, the famed comedians. Also on hand were Cord Jefferson, who won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay this year for the film “American Fiction,” and Jessica Seinfeld, the author and producer who is married to Jerry Seinfeld. “It’s showing that people who have been deemed the scum of society, the stain on civilization, are worth being seen,” Jones said. “We’re not the sum of our mistakes. We’re still people who love, people who create.” The festival was the latest development in San Quentin’s transformation from the state’s most notorious and violent prison to one that has become known for the creative and athletic achievements of its prisoners. The prison, opened in 1852, housed death row until Gov. Gavin Newsom stopped executions and had the gas chamber and lethal injection equipment removed in 2019. The last execution was in 2006. It now houses 3,114 prisoners. Last year, Newsom announced a name change from San Quentin State Prison to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. Some of the most violent criminals have been moved to other prisons, and about 3,000 volunteers now visit to teach skills like acting and financial literacy and lead therapy groups.

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A daily report co-sponsored by Arizona State University, Criminal Justice Journalists, and the National Criminal Justice Association

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