The Box, film screening and discussion

"Every day, in prisons and jails across the United States, some eighty thousand people are held in solitary confinement, isolated and deprived of human contact. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that such conditions cause the brain to wither and can lead to permanent neurological damage.

... All of this research and regulation reinforces what is already intuitive: taking away individuals’ ability to interact with the world around them strips them of what it is to be human. This notion is easy to understand; what is far more difficult to comprehend, for those who have never endured solitary confinement, is how it feels to be locked by the state in a cell no bigger than a parking space. “The Box,” a short documentary directed by James Burns and Shal Ngo, vividly bridges that gap. The film blends first-person narration, live-action reenactment sequences, and stop-motion animation to explore the psychological trauma that solitary confinement inflicts on survivors." Excerpt from Jackson Vail's September 2022 article in the New Yorker.

The Box is a hybrid short film that combines documentary, stop-motion animation, and cinematic vignettes to immerse the audience in the world of solitary confinement, through interviews with three people who have spent a combined 9 years in solitary, one of whom is one of the two directors of the film, James Burns.

The short film (16 minutes) will be followed by a discussion facilitated by Five Mualimm-ak, a survivor of solitary confinement and one of the three people featured in the documentary.

Free and open to the public. No registration required.

This film screening is made possible in collaboration with the Understanding and Responding to Mass Incarceration (URMI) 2025 Conference: Wrongful Conviction, Wrongful Incarceration. Registration for the URMI conference on April 11 is required in advance.