Noel Spirandelli
The movie looks at a north-side Milwaukee neighborhood where more than 60 percent of men have spent time in prison by age 34.
The film opens on a quiet cityscape. Rows of gray warehouses rise above a brownish river bank. American flags flap noiselessly against a cloudy sky. Then these words appear on the screen: “Wisconsin has the highest percentage of incarcerated black males in the nation … On Milwaukee’s north side, in the zip code 53206, 62 percent of men have spent time in prison by the time they are 34.”
This is Milwaukee 53206, a cinéma vérité documentary chronicling the human cost of mass incarceration. The film — which follows several residents of the 53206 zip code — received its world premiere at the Milwaukee Film Festival in 2016. Since then, it’s been screened more than 200 additional times, including once before Congress, and has raked in numerous awards.
Director Keith McQuirter, who also worked on the Emmy-nominated series Brick City, says he set out to make the movie because he wanted to humanize a dehumanizing experience. “We can easily find statistics about the mass incarceration rate in this country, but you can’t connect emotionally to numbers.”
Before and during production, McQuirter spent months talking to, and filming, people whose lives have been upended by jail sentences. People like Beverly Walker. An activist and mother of five, Beverly often advocates for her incarcerated husband, Baron, and other Wisconsin prison inmates adversely affected by the state’s regressive sentencing laws (Baron has spent more than two decades in prison for two robberies he committed when he was in his early 20s).
A few minutes into the documentary, we see Beverly throw a birthday party for one of her kids. There’s a cake with white and pink frosting, a banquet table piled high with food, and her whole family is there. Everyone, of course, except Baron. “It always feels like something is missing,” she admits.
One of the executive producers, CarolAnne Dolan, believes that the film has resonated with audiences as much as it has because viewers find it so easy to identify with Beverly, an overworked but resourceful wife and mother doing the best she can to provide for her family. “They feel the weight of the world on this woman’s shoulders,” Dolan says. “My hope is that anyone who sees it will be moved to do something.”
McQuirter is also hopeful that the documentary will inspire people to take action and advocate for criminal justice reform. “We’re all complicit in this,” he says. “If we’re apathetic about stealing peoples’ lives away, then we’re part of the problem.”
Milwaukee 53206 will screen at Union South’s Marquee Cinema on May 7, followed by a panel discussion with UW-Madison law professor Cecelia Klingele and community activists Frank Davis and Davette Baker. It can also be streamed on the WORLD Channel.
