In 1996, the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) was founded by Katherine Vockins at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. This has spawned countless theatrical pieces in maximum security prisons and provides convicts with a sense of community and creativity as they serve their sentences behind bars. Adapting one of the progam’s many stories for the big screen, Sing Sing follows inmate John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield (Colman Domingo) as he and his fellow prisoners as they attempt to stage an original production titled Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code. I was fortunate enough to sit down with director Greg Kwedar to discuss the film…

Obviously Sing Sing is a prison movie but it doesn’t have the trappings of what we’ve come to expect from this subgenre. How did you approach telling a story with such dark themes but with the light that shines through your film?

You know, I think it’s self-evident inside this world and within the program and I think if you really are there to witness it, there is a wonderful warmth and life force emanating from this work and this program despite a dark environment that surrounds it. I think prison is the setting, but it’s not the focus. The focus is on these men and their work and their discovery of the beauty and possibility within them. This is inherently a light – a true light that’s emanating out of them that we’re attracted to.

Continue reading “Sing Sing Interview: Greg Kwedar – ‘To witness a film set through their eyes really brought us back to the joy that we have in the work’.” →