EMPOWERMENT AVENUE FILMS

Friendly Signs

Friendly Signs, a 2024 Atlanta Film Festival pick, is the story of Tommy Wickerd's struggle to start a sign language class inside a state prison. Tommy grew up signing with his deaf brother, but he wasn't the best of siblings. He often grew tired of interpreting at family events, and told his brother Michael, "read their lips." Tommy turned his life around while serving 57 years for an act of violence.

Incarcerated Deaf people are often denied equal access to education, therapeutic groups, and opportunities to parole earlier at a prison called Corcoran SATF. Legal advocates won a petition to move 12 deaf men from Corcoran to San Quentin. When Tommy found out, he sought out to serve his brother's community by starting a sign language class to teach everyone willing to learn in order to make San Quentin a welcoming space for deaf people.

This film matters because deaf people are invisible even to other people in prison. Friendly Signs teaches about deaf culture and the importance of making sign language available to all willing to learn.

Friendly Signs is supported by grants from Sundance Documentary Institute, The MacArthur foundation, The Marshall Project, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Johnathan Logan Foundation, Meadow Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Berkeley Film Foundation.

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To support documentary films made by system-impacted people designed to seize control of our narratives and achieve maximum social impact.

Upcoming Empowerment Avenue Film projects include:

DaKulture (Needs: $50K to produce, edit, color, sound design, and submit to film festivals)

Demetrius “Meech” Buckley hasn’t allowed incarceration to stop him from doing anything. In 2022, he won the prestigious Chapbook Poetry Award along with honorable mentions for his fiction and nonfiction entries. “Simply, I am a writer who must write,” wrote Demetrius “Meech” Buckley. “Even in the days swimming through the concrete I wrote poems, essays, and stories as a pastime.”

Now, Meechie seeks to directed and produce his own documentary using tablet video visits. His film, DaKulture, will showcase the talent of those thrown away behind bars and denied good time, despite turning their lives around.

I Do: Finding Love…Behind Bars. (Needs: $30K for editing, coloring, and sound designing plus impact tour)

I Do, a short documentary directed by Rahsaan Thomas while he was incarcerated, is about Black love. I Do pushes back against the narrative that Black men in prison are out to use women by showcasing what love behind bars actually looks like. It also, hints that the systematic destruction of Black male bodies leaves Black women in California 53,000 men short. I Do follows a Black couple who met through an online dating platform and found happiness.

The film is completely shot and a rough-cut version is ready for finishing. We seek $30K to complete the editing, sound design, coloring, film festival submission and social impact tours.

Silent Treatment (need $450K to complete a 90-minute feature about the treatment of deaf people in the California carceral system.)

Silent Treatment, will be a 90-minute feature about the treatment of deaf people in the California prison system, picking up where the film festival qualifying Friendly Signs left off. This film is currently in the beginning stages of production.

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What These Walls Won’t Hold - Producer