April 27 – May 13

Unmaking the Prison Image is a three-episode podcast series from Visualizing Abolition exploring the role documentary can play in imagining a world without prisons. Hosted by Pooja Rangan, author of Immediations and The Documentary Audit, and co-author with Brett Story of the forthcoming Why Look at Prisons?, the series brings together filmmakers, scholars, and system-impacted artists and organizers who are rethinking how prisons are represented, with an eye toward collective liberation.

Episode One, Film Pedagogy as Abolitionist Practice, explores how abolitionist filmmaking can teach us to unlearn dominant ways of seeing and knowing the prison.

Episode Two, …But What About the Rapists and Murderers?, addresses one of the most common questions encountered by abolitionists, by asking instead how rape functions as a way of seeing the prison.

Episode Three, Against the Carceral-Entertainment Complex, challenges collaborations among law enforcement, prisons, and corporate media, and considers how documentary might refuse these partnerships.

Join us as we examine the challenges and possibilities of abolitionist media practice, and ask what it would mean to unmake the prison image.

Unmaking the Prison Image is a production of Visualizing Abolition, a public scholarship initiative at the University of California, Santa Cruz, directed by Gina Dent and Rachel Nelson.

Image credit: Christopher Harris, still/here, 2000. Photo courtesy the artist.