"A Woman on the Outside" Film Screening
2023-04-01 19:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | The Sanctuary, 3361 6th Ave, Troy, 12180, United States
Join Directors Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville and protagonist Kristal Bush for the screening of the documentary film A Woman on the Outside, about the struggle to keep families connected despite incarceration. Before the film screening, all three women will give a Be The Media! workshop and give a brief opening reception to the Women on the Outside exhibition. After the film there will be a panel discussion with local prison justice activists.

5pm: Be The Media! Workshop: Participatory Design in Journalistic Process with directors Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville with documentary participant Kristal Bush.6:30pm: opening reception for the Women on the Outside exhibition in the Sanctuary cafe.7:00pm: screening of A Women on the Outside followed by a panel discussion and networking.

Curator: Branda Miller.

Sponsored by: iEAR Presents! and the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Rensselaer, made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Co-sponsored by: The Chris Wilson Foundation, The Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP Campaign, Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, The Center for Law and Justice, and Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration.

Masks are encouraged and will be available at this event. If you are feeling unwell or have any symptoms of illness please stay home and rest.

“A Woman on the Outside” Q&A

About the Film

Growing up, Kristal watched nearly every man in her life disappear to prison. She channeled that struggle into keeping families connected, both as a social worker and with her van service that drives families to visit loved ones in far-off prisons. But when Kristal’s dad and brother return to Philly, her happiness meets the realization that release doesn’t always mean freedom. Passionate, funny and resilient, Kristal remains determined to carve out a different future — for herself and for her young nephew, Nyvae. Part observational documentary, part family album, A Woman on the Outside is a tender portrait of one family striving to love in the face of a system built to break them. website

https://vimeo.com/725900136?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=9616283

By the end of the trip, Lois and Rachel, who are newer riders, laugh and talk with the other women. Kristal’s regular riders say they look forward not just to the visit, but to catching up with friends they have made on the van.

“It’s something to look forward to,” Tanesha says of visiting day. “We talk about this stuff all week long, all of us. Sometimes we all get together and cook food and sit down and talk. Because that’s what we be needing. From one sister to another. From one wife to another.”

Photos and Videos by Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville

Filmmaker Bios

Zara Katz (Director/Producer) is a filmmaker and photo producer for editorial, documentary and branded content, specializing in crafting character-driven visual stories. Katz is currently Photography Director at NBC News.com, and has worked with outlets including The New York Times Lens blog, Time magazine, Medium, The Guardian U.S., Pop-Up Magazine and Lifetime/A+E Networks. She was the Senior Photography Producer on a Getty Images/Dove campaign photographed by more than 100 women and non-binary photographers, which won the Silver Glass Lion at Cannes in 2019.

Lisa Riordan Seville (Director/Producer) is an award-winning reporter and independent filmmaker whose stories explore how money, power and policy shapes the lives of everyday people. Her investigative and enterprise work has appeared across NBC News platforms, on BuzzFeed News, The Guardian U.S., Lifetime/A+E Networks and WNYC Radio. It has been recognized with a Peabody, a Hillman Award and a Sigma Delta Chi from the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. Her most recent piece was a cover story for New York Magazine about the deaths of 15 men in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex.

Panelist Bios

Kristal Bush is the protagonist of the documentary film A Woman on the Outside.

Jose Di Lenola, Clemency Campaign Director of RAPP

At the age of 16, Jose was sentenced to 26 1/3 years to life for second-degree murder and served eighteen of those years in Attica prison and various correctional facilities. While incarcerated he worked as a rehabilitation peer educator in relapse prevention, anger management, and mental health; and mentored at-risk youth diversionary programs. Jose co-founded and served as President of the Attica Lifer’s Organization and consulted several organizations. Jose was released in December 2021, has his own consultation business, Carceral Consultation, and is the Clemency Campaign Director for the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP).

TeAna Taylor, Co-Director of Policy & Communications and Capital Region Organizer at RAPP

TeAna advocates for children of incarcerated parents, informed by their father’s nearly two decades of incarceration and working with We Got Us Now and the HALT Solitary Campaign. They have been engaging their community in restorative justice work for the past five years. They created and maintained a peer mediation program at a local middle school, leading mediations between youth, parents, and teachers; facilitating circles that ranged from community building within classrooms to repairing harm between community members; providing conflict coaching sessions for students; and training students in peer mediation and conflict resolution. TeAna has also facilitated circles to address issues faced by students and faculty of color at their alma mater, SUNY Schenectady, that led to policy change for a more inclusive and diverse campus.

Co-sponsors

The mission of the Chris Wilson Foundation is to transform the incarceration system by providing better and more sustainable programming for incarcerated individuals that centers personal relationships, resilience, development and agency. Our Master Plan Program focuses on trauma and resilience, systemic oppression and mass incarceration and goal-setting and reentry. The program is being implemented in three states, and is currently running at the Capital District Youth Detention Center in Albany.

The Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP Campaign is a grassroots advocacy organization created and led by formerly incarcerated people and family members of people in prison. We work to end mass incarceration and promote racial justice through the release of aging people in prison and those serving long sentences. We work to dismantle the racist policies of mass incarceration by expanding the use of parole, compassionate release, clemency, and other forms of release in New York State. We work with other organizations across the country to end life imprisonment in the United States. By organizing community power to free incarcerated elders, we work to uproot a system of endless punishment that fuels mass incarceration and damages Black and other communities of color.

The mission of Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York is to provide high quality, effective legal representation and assistance to indigent prisoners, help them to secure their civil and human rights and advocate for more humane prisons and for a more humane criminal justice system.

The Center for Law and Justice recognizes that the criminal justice system in the United States has a history of racism and classism, stemming from both laws and practices, that continues to this day. It is the center’s mission to reform the criminal justice system and dismantle its oppressive elements.

The Center for Law and Justice aims to eliminate the gap between law and justice by creating an equitable criminal justice system which values all human life and acknowledges community members as partners in public safety. The center seeks to achieve this goal through amplifying the voices of marginalized people and communities, while educating and empowering those same communities to demand an end to mass criminalization, mass incarceration, and systemic oppression.

Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration (CAAMI) seeks to challenge and dismantle mass incarceration and the systems of oppression that sustain it. We do this through coordinated actions and by opening the dialogue about mass incarceration and the criminal injustice system in a way that is empowering to all individuals and communities affected by them. CAAMI defines “mass incarceration” as both the excessive quantity of people caught in the criminal justice system, and the racially discriminatory and cruel quality of the current punitive model of social control. Police brutality, racially disparate sentencing, and post-prison discrimination function as a self-reinforcing system that damages communities.

"Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation" Book Talk & Discussion
2023-10-14 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for a conversation around the book Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation, edited by Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago, the duo that makes up Women Picturing Revolution. They will present their book before a discussion with local photographer and doula Jayana LaFountaine and ending with a Q&A with the audience.

5:00pm-6:00pm: Join Jayana LaFountaine for a photography-based workshop around our identities and lineage in Who’s On Your Face?

6:00pm-7:00pm: Community Meal

7:00pm-9:00pm: A discussion around Black motherhood and representations of it in photography, centered around the book Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation

About the book:

Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation questions how the Black female body, specifically the Black maternal body, navigates interlocking structures that place a false narrative on her body and that of her maternal ancestors. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly inquiry and contemporary art, this book addresses these misconceptions and fills in the gaps that exist in the photographic representation of Black motherhood, mothering, and mutual care within Black communities.

The essays and interviews, paired with a curated selection of images, address the complicated relationship between Blackness and photography and in particular its gendered dimension, its relationship to health, sexuality, and digital culture – primarily in the context of racialized heteronormativity. This collection, then, challenges racist images and discourses, both historically and in its persistence in contemporary society, while reclaiming the innate brilliance of Black women through personal stories, history, political acts, connections to place, moments of pleasure, and communal celebration.

This visual exploration of Black motherhood through pictures made by Black woman–identifying photographers thus serves as a reflection of the past and a portal to the future and contributes to recent scholarship on the complexity of Black life and Black joy.

Photography, revolution, representation. Through leading seminars, curating panels, and consulting services, Women Picturing Revolution (WPR) co-creators Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago are reclaiming and retelling history in a manner that is both radical and necessary. By highlighting the work of woman photographers who have documented conflicts, crises, and revolutions in private realms and public spaces, WPR sheds light on personal and political experiences that are often overlooked or underrepresented. From images made as a response to forced silence, oppression, and the inability to act, to well-known visual journalists documenting upheaval, Lesly and Zoraida, along with WPR participants, examine not only the photographs but also the conditions under which women make images.

Jayana LaFountaine is an Afro-Latina portrait photographer and birth Doula based in Troy, New York. Her work focuses on vulnerability and the preservation of legacy through photo documentation and birth work. As a former foster youth with an adverse childhood she understands the importance of creating strong familial connections through this work. She does this work with Black and Brown folks at the forefront. Photography is a means for her to heal while creating a better reality outside of abuse and trauma. Birth work is her birth right as she is a 4th generation birthworker.

EVENT PHOTOS:

Be The Dance Party!
2025-06-07 14:00 - 17:00
Spaces for joy are an important part of resistance movements when built around creating community, encouraging creative expression, and inviting inclusive participation. Be The Dance Party! is part panel discussion, part dance party. We will hear from folks on the panel on how they have each used joy, music, and creative expression to build movements in our community. The audience will then transition into party-prep to decorate, dress, and hydrate before the daylight dance party begins! This is a family-friendly event.

Panel discussion, 2-3pmDance party, 3-5pm

Panelists:

Moderated by Angela Beallor, a co-creator of The Flagsss Day Collective and Documentarian in Community Co-Creation of MDOCS at Skidmore College

Hana van der Kolk is a queer dancer, artist, and embodied learning, ritual, and celebration facilitator. She spends time looking for and co-creating bridges through pedagogy, performance, language, healing, celebration, transformation, and the dismantling of empire inside and out. Hana was part of starting and maintaining Polly, Troy’s underground queer dance party and community fundraiser from 2014 to 2019 and is part of the FlagsSs Day Collective with Angela Beallor and Elizabeth (EP) Press. https://www.hanavanderkolk.com/

DJ Nate Da Great is an Albany based DJ that has lit up dance floors across the Capital District and beyond. He’s best known for his mixing skills, creative music selection and ability to play for diverse audiences. Nate believes that creating community, inclusive vibes and moments of joy on the dance floor are all just a basic part of a DJs job.

Patrick Harris Jr. is a multidisciplinary founder who turns big ideas into systems that work. As CEO of Collectiveffort, he’s led brand, media, and infrastructure projects ranging from global companies to grassroots orgs and public institutions.

Dance Party DJed by Intell Hayesfield

This event includes music, panelists, and DJ from The No More Genre Show

Listen Friday and Saturday nights to Sanctuary Radio, from 10pm-1am, to hear The No More Genre Show. Tune into 105.3fm Troy or steam online at MediaSanctuary.org

Water Justice and Media Lab End of Season Celebration
2026-11-14 19:00 - 21:00
Celebration featuring youth-produced short film and presentations about the 2026 Water Justice and Media Lab Season. …more info coming soon
