What makes someone a filmmaker? Is it simply the ability to use a camera to tell a story? If that's the case, then any sporadic tourist in Times Square with a consumer handheld can be called a filmmaker. Do you have to specialize in a craft, a templated way of telling a story? If that's the case, then Uwe Boll or Ed Wood could camp under the tent of a filmmaker. Those men were certainly directors, but there comes a certain sense of reverence, authorship, and artistic merit with the term filmmaker. Legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard claims that a filmmaker needs to use a camera to see what cannot be seen without a camera. This seems to imply that anyone can be a filmmaker as long as the story they're telling is opening others' eyes to a side of life, whether internal or external, that they never knew existed. In this sense, prison inmate Omar Broadway has entered the echelon of the filmmaker with his edifying An Omar Broadway Film.
Omar Broadway was arrested in 1999 in East Orange for car-jacking a taxi with a sawed off shotgun. As a member of the East Coast Bloods, Omar was jailed in The Security Threat Group Management Unit (STGMU) of Newark, New Jersey's Northern State Prison, a section of the jail infamous for housing some of the east coast's top ranking gang members. What many people don't know about the unit is how many human rights violations occur against prisoners there on a regular basis. Prisoners are often denied showering, yard, and meal privileges, cells built for a solitary prisoner always hold two, and the COs (Corrections Officers) often step beyond the bounds of necessary force in dealing with inmates.
Because those outside STGMU don't know this, Omar Broadway made a film. Because those outside STMGU don't know Omar Broadway, director Douglas Tirola helped.
Risking great peril to his own life, Omar had a camera snuck into Northern State Prison. Smuggling in the camera was a major breach of security, but as astonishing as that is, the implication that it only could've been accomplished with the help of a guard is even more surprising. However, the "how" quickly becomes irrelevant as Omar documents for us the "why." Omar's footage is shot over a six month period and documents everything from the beatings protesting inmates receive to his tearful amorous message to the daughter he held only once. Initially intended to be used as a bribe to secure his freedom, Omar's documentation of the daily grind in Northern State quickly becomes a revelation of subpar human conditions and a plea for change. Some of the footage is hard to watch. Protesting prisoners are repeatedly beaten way beyond the force necessary, one is dragged across the floor like an animal, and Thanksgiving dinner is completely withheld after a lockdown refusal is quelled.
The film, though, is not entirely an episode of Hard Copy; it reveals a problematic justice system in which $1.30 is spent per day on meals per prisoner, and is a visual companion piece to Elijah Anderson's "Code of the Streets" which sheds light on the family structure found within gang culture. At no point does Omar ever try to vindicate himself from what he did - he knows he's guilty but he knows he can be redeemed as well. The violent footage is just one piece of a grander mosaic that conveys our cultural and social ignorance. Omar's mother, Lynne, details many events in Omar's life that may have gravitated him towards a more stable family life and many of the law enforcement higher-ups, though genuine, come across as startlingly naive with their generalizations of criminality.
An Omar Broadway Film is a powerful reminder that there are individuals at the heart of every conflict. Omar Broadway is a human being just like every other inmate at Northern State Prison and with his smuggled camera, he shows us how cold and brutal life can be when humanity is stripped away and replaced with generalizations. With his smuggled camera, Omar Broadway shows us what we may never have been aware of before. With his smuggled camera, Omar Broadway is a filmmaker.
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-Text interview with An Omar Broadway Film co-director, Douglas Tirola from indieWIRE
-An article from The New York Sun about America's camcorder society
