In the fall of 1971, at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility in New York, over 1,200 inmates seized the yard and took more than three dozen guards and civilian employees hostage. At the 50th anniversary of the uprising and massacre, master filmmaker Stanley Nelson and Showtime bring us the new documentary Attica revisiting the largest and deadliest prison rebellion in U.S. history. The documentary features testimony from former inmates, and from Dr. Clarence B. Jones, who played a central role as a witness and intermediary on behalf of the inmates in their effort to secure basic human rights in the prison.
This morning the Academy of Arts and Science announced the nomination of Stanley Nelson’s magnificent film Attica for Best Documentary.
Please see this extraordinary, searing, devastating film. You will never forget it.
“”Attica” is a jarring, engrossing, and enraging reminder of how those in power will lie, humiliate, kill and cover up to retain it, and the documentary is one of the year’s best…. Clarence Jones, who was invited into Attica to share the prisoners’ requests for expanded visitation privileges, better food and healthcare, religious freedom, and higher wages with the watching world — and who would quickly realize how unbending “the naked fist of power … law and order” is to any challenge to its authority.”
“Stanley Nelson’s topical, often shocking day-by-day account of the Sept. 9, 1971, Attica prison revolt is one of the finest, most important documentaries you’ll see this year — or any other year… Nelson’s film cries out anew for prison reform while exposing America’s deep roots of racism entrenched in the corridors of politicians, police and prisons.”
“As those at Attica attempted to negotiate peacefully and democratically, their insistence upon outside observers and the presence of Black media representatives (including “Amsterdam News” publisher Clarence B. Jones and ABC News’s John Johnson) helped to expose the system’s hypocrisy.”
Prisoners in protest, Attica Prison, 1971; photo courtesy of The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College
Here are Dr. Jones’s reflections on his experience in Attica prison:
Dr. Clarence B. Jones: Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising
