About Still Here
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Still Here is an immersive multimedia project exploring incarceration, erasure and gentrification that premiered at the 2020 Sundance film festival. The story is told through a composite character named Jasmine Smith who comes back home to Harlem, NYC, after serving 15 years in prison for killing her boyfriend in self-defense.
Crafted in collaboration with formerly incarcerated women and combining robust journalism with cinematic storytelling, the experience comprises three parts – interactive virtual reality (VR), audio with augmented reality (AR) and a photo gallery.
Interactive VR
In the interactive VR film, the viewer rides along with 37-year old Jasmine as she lives her first day as a “free person”. In VR, we explore the grandmother’s home in Harlem that Jasmine grew up in. Through 360° videos and audio snippets we get access to Jasmine’s past memories and possible future as she navigates her life post-incarceration.
Through Jasmine’s story, we see firsthand what loss, delayed redemption and self-discovery look like for black women and men in America.
Audio and AR
The audio and AR story takes place in Jasmine’s Harlem neighborhood. In the three chapters of the audio story, we hear Jasmine’s interactions with her uncle, a coffee shop owner and a homeless person. The AR filters associated with each chapter act as a window into Jasmine’s mind; her thoughts, fears, hallucinations – and the myriad visions projected onto her – come alive as she reacquaints herself with her changed neighborhood.
In one scene, Jasmine’s anxieties about looking for work are explored through her conversation with an owner of a newly opened coffee shop. In another, Jasmine’s interaction with a homeless man recognizes black people’s history of persistence and resistance, which has taken on a new meaning in post black lives matter America.
Photo Gallery
In the Six Women photo series by Sara Bennett, the women provide different glimpses into the criminal justice system and the reentry process. The Prison Map series by Josh Begley aggregates and reassembles 5,393 satellite images of American prisons, jails, and detention centers in an attempt to bring into relief the otherwise hidden landscape of incarceration in the U.S.
Our Collaborative Process
Our collaboration with nine formerly incarcerated women from Women’s Prison Association (WPA) in NYC began in January 2019. We started with workshops on immersive storytelling, storyboarded the VR and AR scripts with them and included their feedback during the post process. Our goal was to make the scripts, Jasmine’s character and her experiences as authentic as possible.
“Working with AJ Contrast was a unique experience because we, as systems-involved women, were sought out as experts in our own stories,” Elaine Daly, WPA graduate and Still Here collaborator, said. “More often, we are approached by storytellers looking to check boxes, but with AJ Contrast, we drew the boxes ourselves, and the team filled them in with their own creativity and amazing technology.”