April 30, 2008 11:21AM EDT

Omar Phones It In for An Omar Broadway Film Screening

After the Sunday screening of An Omar Broadway Film, the documentary shot covertly in Newark’s Northern State Prison with a smuggled camera, co-director Douglas Tirola had a surprise for the audience. After bringing up producer Susan Bedusa and editor Robert Greene, he called Lynn Broadway—Omar’s mother, also featured in the film—to come down from the audience. After she made her way to the front, smiling widely and waving to everyone’s applause, she had her own surprise: Omar was on the phone, speaking from the Maryland prison he had been transferred to after the film. 

“I just want to thank everyone for their continued support,” said the audibly enthusiastic Broadway. “And I just want everyone to know, this will definitely not be the last anyone has heard from me.”

The audience laughed and applauded even louder, after which Broadway’s mother and Tirola proceeded to take questions from the audience (which also included, as Tirola pointed out, one of Broadway’s brothers, who is currently working as a DJ). Tirola and Lynn Broadway were conspicuously coy about Omar’s future plans and with questions that dealt with how exactly Omar smuggled the camera into the State Prison in the first place. All they would divulge was that the plan was hatched between Omar and one of the corrections officers who was himself fed up with the abuse he saw of the prisoners. The identity of the CO remains a mystery.

A number of the audience members were obviously energized by the film and expressed hope that it would lead to a wider understanding of the institutional abuses that happen in the US every day, and that it would also begin a dialogue about the crisis. Everyone, including the filmmakers, clearly agreed with those sentiments, and as Tirola left the auditorium he confided that he hoped this film would continue a tradition along the lines of José Padilha's Bus 174 and make people think about things they may not have before.