FILM

Join Project Row Houses for a Movie Night:  Screening by Ashley Hunt. Friday, July 8, 2011, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, at 2521 Holman Street. For July, Project Row Houses’ Movie Night features Artist-in-Residence, Ashley Hunt. Join us as Hunt presents his work on the ongoing crisis of mass incarceration in the USA and beyond. This event is free and open to the public; light snacks provided.

Since 1999, Ashley has authored a number of films in collaboration with grassroots organizations, including Critical Resistance, the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, Citizens for Quality Education and others, documenting the the Prison Industrial Complex, its devastating effects on communities, and the activism that opposes it.

Since 1970, prison populations have grown from 280,000 prisoners to nearly 2.5 million, with 50% of that population being African American. Locating the beginnings of this growth within state responses to desegregation, struggles for civil rights, and the assertions of people power in the 1960s, when “crime control” became a new way to pursue “racial control” under a different name, Ashley’s project connects this history to today’s complex of politicians, agencies, institutions and businesses who profit from a prison system that warehouses the symptoms of racism, poverty and genocide.

Beginning at 6:30pm, Ashley will show a selection of his works from “The Corrections Documentary Project”  (http://correctionsproject.com ), including “Corrections,” “Attica: Roots of Resistance,” and “Close Tallulah Now!” followed by a discussion of his research, information about the new movement for prison abolition and discussion.

Ashley is working with PRH on a larger project called "Communograph" which will be launched as part of Round 35 in the fall 2011. This special event is made possible through a one week residency supported in part by National Performance Network's Visual Artists Network.