09 Jun Documenting hidden truths
What’s the value of cinematic documentation? Our new film-in-progress The Truth Tellers has brought an urgency to this question: How to see a full picture of what really happened around violations of immigrants’ human rights for future accountability? As part of The Truth Tellers project, community-led truth commissions will support people to talk about their fight and their insight.
We amplify the voices of people who are often at the center of struggles yet whose voices are excluded. Our films include their perspectives as central to understanding events as they unfold. Documentation preserves memory as we challenge the official version of history.
Take the hunger strikers at Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, NJ. The hunger strikers wrote the most expressive letter detailing their anguish around family separation, lack of food, basic medical care, filthy conditions and forced labor.
Their cry was answered by hundreds of protestors braving beatings, tear gas, and pepper ball projectiles by ICE agents and state troopers. As the crowd outside Delaney Hall grew, the people inside flash room lights and put their bodies against the windows, a visual reminder of power seized from inside by those held prisoner.
These protestors, family members, and community allies also documented what is happening, as thousands have been doing across the country since ICE’s horrific operations began last year. What we will do as filmmakers is take this exceptionally powerful documentation and shape it into a work of artful storytelling.
Screenshots of the letter written by people incarcerated inside Delaney Hall Immigrant Detention Center.
The Truth Tellers will share the emotional journey from those risking everything to stand up, speak out and forge the path forward. It will be an imaginative visual presentation that reminds us of the beauty of our shared humanity using the power of documentary cinema.
