Advocacy Video Project

Who Are We?

We're a collective of filmmakers in New York who harness the humanizing power of documentary film to improve people's outcomes in the criminal-legal system. Our videos provide a holistic picture of our clients’ lives, insisting on their humanity amidst a dehumanizing carceral system.

We partner with trusted organizations to produce “advocacy videos,” or short mitigation-based documentaries, that are used to reduce clients' exposure to traumatic carceral settings.

Our videos are used at two stages:

  • Pre-Trial for plea negotiation and sentencing

  • Post-Conviction for clemency and resentencing

Since 2019, we have produced compelling 5-15 minute documentaries to help people get out of jail/prison and get back to their communities.

“My release from prison was long-awaited but, ultimately, it was arbitrary. I know so many guys—fathers and sons, breadwinners and community leaders—who could have gotten out instead of me if someone came along and made a documentary about them.”

—Skye Williamson

Core Commitments

Decarcerate
Over-sentencing is rampant and traumatizing. Prosecutors, judges, and other stakeholders must recognize the full humanity of incarcerated people.

Uplift Artists
Good storytelling is key to decarceration. Documentaries bring incarcerated people off the page, making their experiences, traumas, and trasformations visceral.

How

We train and supervise early- and mid-career filmmakers in advocacy video production, helping to expand their artistic practice in service of decarceration.

  • Recruit talented documentary filmmakers who share our values.

  • Train and supervise them in mitigation, trauma-informed interviewing, and criminal procedure.

  • Partner with public defense and other public-interest legal organizations, who refer clients for advocacy videos.

  • Commission videos from our network of filmmakers, subsidizing production and paying them a standard rate.

  • Create space for our system-impacted clients to tell their stories. Few are ever given the opportunity to testify in court. Our work recognizes extensive psychiatric research showing the therapeutic value of self-storytelling.

Our Work

On our pre-trial videos, we have seen an average of 59% reduction in sentence imposed compared to sentence sought or originally offered by prosecutors.*

*Data based on cases in which sentences have been imposed, as of March 2023. 

Our Roots

Advocacy Video Project was co-founded in 2019 by Matt Nadel, a documentary filmmaker, and Skye Williamson, a criminal-justice transformation activist who spent 25 years in New York State prison, under the supervision of Cynthia Kling, Director of Transforming Lives.

In 2019, Nadel produced an advocacy video to support Williamson’s application for clemency—his third such application, though his first with a video. In 2020, Williamson was granted clemency. Advocacy Video Project was inspired by their shared success.

Our Team

Matt Nadel is a documentary filmmaker and journalist from Florida, now based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been supported by the Catapult Film Fund, Solomon Research Fellowship in LGBT Studies at Yale, and Monroe Fellowship at Tulane University’s New Orleans Center for the Gulf South.

Matt’s most recent film, CANS Can’t Stand (The New Yorker 2023), follows a group of Black trans women in New Orleans who are fighting to repeal Louisiana’s unjust Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS) law. His reporting has appeared in The Marshall Project, The Boston Review, and Scalawag and has been featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Matt has also served as a fellow at the Yale Investigative Reporting Lab and as a consultant for the ACLU of Louisiana. 

Clifton “Skye” Williamson is a co-founder of Transforming Lives. Skye has expressed his skill and passion for the arts by developing and directing educational, theater, and trauma-related rehabilitation programs for incarcerated people. Previously an Associate at the Novogratz Family’s philanthropic Foundation, Galaxy Gives, Skye is now a Project Manager at the REFORM Alliance, A parole and probation reform adavocacy organization. At the REFORM Alliance, Skye works on a range of Special Projects (e.g, a Court Watch Applicaion, Entrepreneurial Development Series) and serves as liaison of REFORM’s Advisory Board (composed of several of the Criminal Justice Reform (CJR) movement’s most prominent advocates and leaders). Skye holds a BA in mathematics from Bard College. His undergraduate studies focused on Artificial Intelligence, algorithms, and machine learning. Skye’s lived experience and ongoing research form the cornerstone of his passion to identify the most effective ways to leverage Information technology and AI to support the criminal legal system reform movement.