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Backbone Media

$150,000Active Strategy

2012 (Duration 1 year)

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Rank and Race: Change at a California Prison is a documentary film that follows four years in the lives of three men who have lived or worked in California's racially segregated Soledad prison for decades, and see segregation as a matter of survival. They find their assumptions challenged when the U.S. Supreme Court orders Soledad to desegregate. Rank and Race takes a close look at the entrenched racial hierarchies of daily prison life, as well as the hope and hidden risks of transformative change at a personal and institutional level. Rank and Race is directed by Noel Schwerin and produced by Backbone Media.

The MacArthur Foundation awarded Backbone Media $150,000 between 2009 and 2012.