The direct catalyst for this film was a videography project, undertaken by Cameo Watkins and Patricia Naqi. As residents of A New Way of Life and interns with the LEAD project, they conducted video interviews with community members in Watts, California about their experience with the police. Their video project was the seed that grew into Visions of Abolition. Setsu Shigematsu, Cameron Granadino, Jolie Chea, and Kai Green worked on developing this film to disseminate the politics of abolition as an urgent alternative to the failure of the criminal legal carceral system.
About the Filmmakers
Setsu Shigematsu
Setsu Shigematsu worked as a volunteer educator-activist at A New Way of Life with the LEAD Project of the Los Angeles Chapter of Critical Resistance for eight years. At the time, she was an Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside. Visions was her first experience making a collaborative film from the grassroots.
Jolie Chea
Jolie Chea worked on the project as a graduate student at USC and was also volunteered at A New Way of Life. They are now an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the Asian American Studies Department.
Cameron Granadino
Cameron Granadino was an undergrad student who went on to do his masters at UC Santa Cruz in Social Documentation. There he made the film Comrade Sunshine which won the ITV award in 2013. Cameron works as a journalist and videographer for The Real News Network.
Kai M. Green
Kai M. Green is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies at Williams college. They are a poet, filmmaker, and an interdisciplinary scholar and combine scholarship, art and activism in their research on race, gender, and sexuality in Black LGBT communities and cultural production.
Spencer Lee
Spencer Lee is a video editor based in Los Angeles. Spencer previously edited the HBO series Legendary and Street Angel.
Eleanor Gomez
Eleanor Gomez is a creative producer, DJ and philanthropist working towards internationally recognized creative programming. She currently organizes an array of programs from monthly online fundraisers for the BIPOC LGBTQIA+ community to financial literacy advocacy for the undocumented community to support diversity in higher education