Prison movie, 1970-1995, long line of women being fingerprinted

A film composed of images from prisons. Quotes from fiction films and documentaries as well as footage from surveillance cameras. A look at the new control technologies, at personal identification devices, electronic ankle bracelets, electronic tracking devices.

Six female prisoners are given a weekend furlough to prepare them for their upcoming parole. While out, they all have miscellaneous sexual experiences, some good, some bad. One returns to her pimp even though he beats her, one overcomes her frigidity, one gets gang raped, two join in a threesome, and one goes back to her criminal lover shortly before the police show up.

A short documentary from 1975 about two women serving 25 years in a Missouri penitentiary. Made with an all-female crew.

Part of BFI collection "Police and Thieves."

This film shows the daily routine at a female prison under freezing conditions in Russia. These prisoners are murderers but most were defending themselves. We can see the scars. One woman said "The only thing my husband didn't hit me with was the stove". Tattoos are common as are relationships with other women. As one woman stated "Women understand everything that men cannot understand"

The film portrays women who were interned for long periods of time in the 1950s without trial. They were humiliated, separated from their families, their lives torn apart. Their crime was that they were wives, mothers, family members. Nearly 40 years later, the film confronts the former internees with their former prison governor, Piroska. Some of the women have traveled home from abroad to meet their former inmates and confront their former jailer.

Women's Prison recounts the life of the prisoners and the problems their families encounter in their struggle to survive. Here again filmmaker Kamran Shirdel employs the cinema verité style. The interviews with the prisoners, social workers and teachers serve as commentaries for "constructed" documentary images.