“Sing Sing” costume designer Desira Pesta on “trauma-informed“ filmmaking

“Sing Sing is a stunner, a film that showcases the power of art to connect and liberate even in the darkest of settings. An exceptionally human script and sensitive direction allow the cast to shine—and, as it so happens, a lot of these actors are playing versions of themselves, many of them people who were formerly incarcerated.

“The film follows Divine G (played by a breathtaking Colman Domingo). Divine G is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit and has been fighting for his freedom for years. Between clemency hearings, he helps lead an acting troupe alongside other incarcerated men, including new member Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin (playing himself).

“This is a true story, popularized a few years ago through coverage of the New York ‘Rehabilitation Through the Arts’ program that put on a slightly wacky historical revue called ‘Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code’ in 2005. But Sing Sing is a much more thoughtful take on the events, focusing on the men at the center of the production.

“Desira Pesta crafted the film’s costumes on a budget, not only for practical reasons, but also as a sort of ‘method’ design that reflected the conditions of the characters, who had to DIY props and costumes for their productions. …

“‘I love doing what I call an emotional response. So it’s just culling images that don’t necessarily talk about clothing as much as they talk about what a character might be attracted to in life. Maybe it’s a stop sign, maybe it’s a desolate road, maybe it’s a closeup of a sweater that’s ripped. I think sometimes it’s great to hone in on what feels right in the world as opposed to just clothes.’ …

“‘This is a very special movie for a variety of reasons. One of them is that we’re depicting real people who lived real, shared, sometimes solo traumatic times that we can only understand if we’ve been inside. And I have not. So I will give huge credit to my sister, Eva [a psychotherapist], for preparing me. I really wanted to be trauma-informed.

“‘This isn’t a bunch of actors who are throwing on greens and saying, ‘Let’s go to prison.’ This isn‘t make-believe. These are real lives. And especially for Jon Adrian ‘JJ’ Velazquez, who is one of our characters, who is also innocent. This was the hardest part for him. As a costume designer, we had to be extremely sensitive, extremely. It’s just a very different situation.

“And so introducing the costumes, they hadn’t been in them for as few as 10 months for JJ, and then as many as a decade or more for others. And so just understanding that this isn’t, again, something as flippant as putting on a chef costume and saying, ‘I’m a chef.’ This is a very different situation.’”

Read the full interview at NoFilmSchool.com.