- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Imagine telling an architect that their job
was to create a facility that made life as difficult
and lonely as possible for other human beings.
Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California
is a maximum security facility
that's sole purpose was to keep prisoners isolated
23 hours a day, away from nature,
their fellow prisoners, and hope.
Tonight's film, The Strike, explores what life was like
for the inmates living in a space
that was actually designed for mass-scale isolation,
what the residents did to combat solitary confinement,
and what effect it had on their mental health.
Pelican Bay opened in 1989.
Each cell was comprised of a concrete block
with a foam pad for a mattress, steel toilets and sinks,
and desks and chairs made of concrete.
Notable inmates over the years include Charles Manson
and record producer Suge Knight.
If the living quarters weren't brutal enough,
guards created a culture of violence
and conditions that made the facility even more inhumane,
beating inmates themselves
or making prisoners fight each other.
Besides the abuse,
this film explores what the inmates would do
to avoid going insane,
including exercising in their tiny cells,
playing chess alone on homemade gameboards made out of paper,
and meditating for hours.
Eventually, all these diversions were not enough.
In 2013, those incarcerated at the maximum security facility,
with the support of their families, took drastic measures.
Over 30,000 California prisoners took part in a hunger strike.
Their demands were to join the general prison population
and end 23 hours a day of solitary confinement.
The Strike is directed by JoeBill Muņoz and Lucas Guilkey.
The directors take viewers not only inside the prison,
but into the cells
where some inmates spent decades of their lives,
allowing viewers a taste
of what life in almost complete isolation is like.
Muņoz and Guilkey use a combination of archival footage,
reenactments, and a set
to show the size, darkness, and bleakness of a solitary cell.
For a documentary filmmaker,
gaining access to footage you didn't even know existed
is like winning the lottery.
Muņoz and Guilkey couldn't believe it
when they discovered unreleased recordings
of meetings between leaders of different racial groups
of the incarcerated,
meetings that ultimately led to the strike.
Guilkey says The Strike was concepted
when he was volunteering for a social media company
while covering the prison conditions
and learned about the revolt.
In a recent interview,
Guilkey talked about the time he spent
with families of the inmates,
learning that when someone is in solitary confinement,
their entire family is in solitary confinement.
He says prisons, by design,
are created to erase people from society
and public consciousness.
Muņoz says that the strikers were completely willing
to sacrifice their lives to call attention
to the inhumane conditions at Pelican Bay.
When the strike ended,
many of the prisoners were surprised
they lived long enough to see change.
Now sit back and see how those who rarely saw the light of day
managed to inspire change from the inside.
The Strike starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.