CWC Docs: What These Walls Won’t Hold
- Thursday, November 7, 2024 / 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 2K digital projection (43 minutes)
- With Adamu Chan (filmmaker)
Transcending the grim realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, Adamu Chan’s powerful documentary What These Walls Won’t Hold (2023) paints a poignant portrait of resilience and hope blossoming within the confines of California’s notorious San Quentin State Prison. Chan, formerly incarcerated himself, offers a unique insider’s view on life in and after San Quentin, delving into his own journey towards freedom. At the same time, he amplifies the voices of his community and their loved ones on both sides of the prison walls.
Filmmaker Adamu Chan will join moderator Althea Wasow (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of What These Walls Won’t Hold.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Filmmaker Adamu Chan
Adamu Chan is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and community organizer from the Bay Area who started filmmaking while incarcerated within San Quentin State Prison. He produced numerous short films while incarcerated, using his experience and vantage point to focus on issues related to social justice. In 2021, he was a recipient of the Docs in Action Film Fund through Working Films and was tapped to produce and direct What These Walls Won’t Hold. The film won Best Mid-Length Documentary at the 2023 San Francisco International Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on PBS/America ReFramed. In 2022, Adamu directed a documentary short for the doc-series Bridge Builders about Ny Nourn, a community member working at the intersections of immigration, incarceration, and gender justice. He is also a 2022 Stanford University Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Mellon Arts Fellow, a 2023 Rockwood Institute Documentary Leaders Fellow, and a 2024 SFFILM House resident.
Moderator Althea Wasow (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
Althea Wasow is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at UCSB. Currently, she is revising her monograph, Moving Images/Modern Policing: Silent Cinema and Its Afterlives, which analyzes the complicity and resistance between police power and motion pictures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is also developing a Bert Williams essay film, Nobody: In Search of Bert Williams and the Emergence of Global Black Cultural Production (fiscal sponsor: Aubin Pictures), and conducting research on the relationship between Vandenberg Space Force Base and the Federal Correctional Complex in Lompoc, California, as Co-Primary Investigator of The Satellite Coast project (with PI Lisa Parks, UCSB, and Co-PI Carlos Jimenez Jr., University of Denver).
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.
CWC Docs
The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.