Attica (1974)
Library of Congress description:
Americans have often ignored somewhat out-of-sight perversions of the American dream: inequality, race relations, conditions at mental hospitals and prisons. These issues only gain the spotlight with coverage of a horrific situation. The September 1971 Attica prison uprising is the deadliest prison riot in U.S. history. To protest living conditions, inmates took over the facility, held hostages, issued a manifesto demanding better treatment, and then engaged in four days of fruitless negotiations. On Day 5, state troopers and prison authorities retook the prison in a brutal assault, leaving 43 inmates and hostages dead. Cinda Firestone’s outstanding investigation of the tragedy takes us through the event, what caused it, and the aftermath. She uses first-hand interviews with prisoners, families and guards, assembled surveillance and news camera footage, and video from the McKay Commission hearings on the massacre. An ex-inmate ends the film with a quote hoping to shake public lethargy on the need for prison reform: “Wake up, because nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream.”
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