'Prison Songs is billed as “Australia’s first musical documentary’ where the subjects express themselves through songs written by Casey Bennetto and Indigenous singer/songwriter Shellie Morris.'
It is captivating, heartbreaking, uplifting and unique.
'Watching prisoners singing and dancing in the unforgiving surrounds of the prison walls is inspiring stuff. Most of the male and female inmates are Indigenous, adding a poignancy to the documentary. The proportion of domestic violence, alcoholism and addiction in their stories is high.'
'Inmates break into hip hop, blues, country, reggae and gospel tunes as they sing about their backgrounds and their daily toil. There are solos, duos and group numbers performed in cells, workyards, laundries -musically giving us access to the personalities behind the prison cases.' (Source: TV Tonight website)
Prison Songs - The Musical
Shellie Morris
,
Casey Bennetto
,
Jo Turner
(director),
2015
2015
8854917
2015
single work
musical theatre
This musical is based on the documentary Prison Songs about the lives of 'Berrimah Hilton' inmates.
'Produced for SBS Television, Kelrick Martin’s Prison Songs is unusual as a documentary in which the participants convey their stories through songs that were written for the film. Centring on inmates of Darwin Correctional Centre, known as Berrimah Prison, and described in its press kit as ‘Australia’s first ever documentary musical’, Prison Songs involved a collaborative production process in which inmates contributed to writing the musical numbers. As a documusical, the film belongs to a documentary subgenre that originated in the United Kingdom and forms part of a wider landscape of convergence between non-fiction and fictional television. Prison Songs expands Australian documentary, contemporary Indigenous film-making and stories about incarceration. The film’s presentation of participants’ experiences through music, story, dance and humour can be situated within the performative documentary mode, in which orthodox screen discourses of sobriety are supplanted by poetic expression. Its use of songs and musical performance as partial alternatives to interviews and narration traverses boundaries between avant-garde and television forms, expression and information, and prison and the wider society.' (Publication summary)
'Produced for SBS Television, Kelrick Martin’s Prison Songs is unusual as a documentary in which the participants convey their stories through songs that were written for the film. Centring on inmates of Darwin Correctional Centre, known as Berrimah Prison, and described in its press kit as ‘Australia’s first ever documentary musical’, Prison Songs involved a collaborative production process in which inmates contributed to writing the musical numbers. As a documusical, the film belongs to a documentary subgenre that originated in the United Kingdom and forms part of a wider landscape of convergence between non-fiction and fictional television. Prison Songs expands Australian documentary, contemporary Indigenous film-making and stories about incarceration. The film’s presentation of participants’ experiences through music, story, dance and humour can be situated within the performative documentary mode, in which orthodox screen discourses of sobriety are supplanted by poetic expression. Its use of songs and musical performance as partial alternatives to interviews and narration traverses boundaries between avant-garde and television forms, expression and information, and prison and the wider society.' (Publication summary)
