Attica

In September 1971 prisoners took control of Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York and held guards hostage. Their demands were not political but basic: adequate food, the right to shower, medical care, an end to racist treatment. Negotiations ran for five days, journalists were let in, cameras rolled. On the sixth day state forces entered the building. The documentary's force comes from its sources. Dozens of new interviews with the prisoners who lived it, with journalists and other witnesses, are set against the audio and film records of the time. The film is less about the uprising than about how the account of it was constructed afterwards: what officials said first did not match what the autopsies said. The uprising ended with the deaths of twenty-nine prisoners and ten hostages. Co-directed by Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry, the film was nominated for the documentary feature Oscar. Who it's for: Anyone interested in the American prison system, civil rights history, and archive-driven documentary. Who it's not for: The footage is heavy and the final section contains explicit violence. The film also takes a side and does not give the state's account equal room.