Independent Lens
Evidence Lost
This five-part series chronicles how thousands of police files in Dallas were misplaced and the larger ramifications for the justice system when evidence is lost.
The Strike
The Strike illuminates the power of organizing in this story about 30,000 California incarcerated people resisting against decades-long solitary confinement.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- February 3, 2025
- Length
- 90 minutes
Director
JoeBill Muñoz
JoeBill Muñoz is an award-winning Mexican-American filmmaker. From Texas, his love for making films started as a teen, lugging around a VHS camcorder through sweltering football fields to tell the stories of kids like him with big dreams. His work helps us understand the invisible injustices behind missed opportunities.
- Other ITVS Films
- Evidence Lost
- Maletero
Director
Lucas Guilkey
Lucas Guilkey, born and raised in California, is an award-winning filmmaker who has spent much of his career investigating systems of power and telling stories of those on the frontlines of fighting oppression. His filmmaking is rooted in empathy and shaped by a commitment to racial justice and social movements.
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The Film
Amidst the redwood trees of the California-Oregon border sits Pelican Bay, one of the most infamous prisons in U.S. history. Opened in 1989, Pelican Bay was designed to sequester prisoners in tiny cells for decades-long periods of isolation.
In the 1970s, law enforcement began sentencing men to indefinite terms in solitary confinement under a protocol called “gang validation.” As tough-on-crime laws of the ‘70s and ‘80s led to a massive influx in the country’s incarcerated population, California sent a generation of mostly Black and Latino men to solitary confinement with little, if any, due process.
By 2013, California had nearly 4,000 people in long-term solitary confinement. One day that year, 30,000 prisoners went on a hunger strike in a protest that began as a whisper in the corridors of Pelican Bay and spread into a feat of unity across California prisons. The film reveals the panic that gripped the highest echelons of state government, with unprecedented access to prison officials and never-before-seen footage from inside Pelican Bay.
Told through the stories of the men who bore the brunt of this practice, The Strike follows the journeys of a cast of solitary survivors, from their battles with prison administrators to abolish the practice of indefinite isolation to the personal ramifications of decades in confinement. The film showcases the power of organizing and prisoner-led resistance, weaving together a half century of criminal justice and personal history into a singular narrative.
