Director, Producer, Editor, Writer
Contessa Gayles
Contessa Gayles is an award-winning film director, writer, DP, editor and producer. She brings intimacy and artistry to stories of identity, community, coming-of-age, liberation and the radical imagination.
Contessa’s formally innovative and critically acclaimed feature documentary-visual album, SONGS FROM THE HOLE (Netflix), world premiered at SXSW 2024, where it won the Audience Award, Visions category. The film went on to earn many accolades, including the Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the BlackStar Film Festival, the Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox Award, four News & Documentary Emmy Award nominations, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and an IDA Award nomination.
Contessa premiered THE DEBUTANTES (Xumo) at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in documentary competition and her documentary shortFOUNDER GIRLS (BET) was executive produced by Queen Latifah and premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. Her work has been supported by Impact Partners, Field of Vision, Sundance Institute, International Documentary Association and more. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies with Film Independent, SFFILM, Firelight Media, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Bay Area Video Coalition, and Open Society Foundations. She was named to DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list and is currently a Concordia fellow.
Previously, she was on staff at CNN, where she directed, produced, shot and edited award-winning original series and documentaries, including her first feature documentary, THE FEMINIST ON CELLBLOCK Y.
JJ’88
Writer, Music Artist, Protagonist, Co-Producer
JJ’88 is a musician, music producer, writer, vocalist and filmmaker from Long Beach, California. He is a prison abolitionist who served a 40-years-to-life sentence he was sentenced to at 15-years-old in California state prison. His music and story are the focal point of the visual album-documentary he wrote and co-produced, Songs from the Hole, which premiered and won the audience award at SXSW in 2024 and is now available on Netflix. He has released three singles since coming home from prison including his latest, “Hustla’s Lament.” He is featured Billboard, Variety and Rolling Stone Magazines.
richie reseda
richie reseda practices transformative justice in his relationships and daily life. He is a formerly-incarcerated music and film producer, content creator, organizer, and creative director. He produced the feature film, Songs from the Hole, as well as its original music. He co-created and co-hosted the Spotify Original podcast, Abolition X, and serves as Political and Creative Firector for The For Everyone Fashion Collective. While in prison he started the worker-owned media collective Question Culture, and co-founded Success Stories Program, the feminist-accountability program chronicled in the CNN documentary, The Feminist on Cellblock Y, also directed by Contessa Gayles.
Producer, Music Producer
David Felix Sutcliffe
Producer
David Felix Sutcliffe is a Sundance and Emmy Award-winning producer dedicated to ambitious cinema that challenges colonial norms. David’s films have been distributed by Netflix, Hulu, POV, BBC, Canal+, screened at Sundance, Tribeca, True/False, CPH: DOX, and funded by Sundance, Ford, Facet, and Field of Vision among others. David’s debut feature (T)ERROR (Netflix, 2015) won a Sundance Special Jury Prize, an Emmy, and an Independent Spirit Award nomination, and was featured in The New York Times Magazine and This American Life. He was included in Filmmaker Magazine’s list of 25 New Faces of Independent Film, is an alum of the Sundance Creative Producing Lab and Edit Lab, a former Soros Equality Fellow and Pew Fellow, and received the IDA’s Emerging Documentary Filmmaker of the Year Award. In addition to SONGS FROM THE HOLE, recent credits include Débora Souza Silva’s FOR OUR CHILDREN (Netflix, 2024), and Sisa Bueno’s forthcoming FOR VENIDA, FOR KALIEF (Tribeca premiere, 2025). David was also a co-producer on Rodrigo Reyes’ 499 (Cinema Guild, 2021), a consulting producer on Stephen Maing’s CRIME + PUNISHMENT (Hulu, 2018), and is now producing Daniel Chein and Mushiva’s forthcoming sci-fi documentary TIME HUNTER (Sundance-supported).
Executive Producers
Jenny Raskin
Lauren Haber
Geralyn White Dreyfous
Regina K. Scully
Meadow Fund
dream hampton
Co-Executive Producers
Kelsey Koenig
Robina Riccitiello
Lauren & John Driscoll
Jennifer Pelling
Dawn Bonder
Daniel J. Chalfen
Marci Wiseman
Contributing Producer
Sako Fisher
Directors of Photography
Michelle Kwong
Contessa Gayles
Editors
Contessa Gayles
Rafe Scobey-Thal
Princess A. Hairston
Featuring
James “JJ’88” Jacobs
Victor Benjamin
William Jacobs Jr.
Janine Jacobs
Reneasha Jacobs
Jacqueline Williams
Naaji Pruitt
Lauren “Indigo Mateo” Jacobs
Performances by
Myles Lassiter as Kid James
Devonte Hoy as Adult James
Jovon Times as Big Brother
Africa Turner as Mom
Ernest Walker as Dad
Ryleigh Legget as Kid Sister
Kellie Evans as Adult Sister
Music
Music Executive Produced by
Rahael Asfaw
richie reseda
JJ’88
Music Written and Performed by
JJ’88
Music Produced by
richie reseda
Dylan Wiggins
Tairiq Bright
Garfield Bright III
JJ’88