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| The Committee: The Takeover of Penal García Moreno | |||
The Penal García Moreno was built in 1871, a prison designed to hold 300 men. 130 years later, essentially unchanged, it’s home to more than a thousand, primarily there for drug offences and thus an unusually cosmopolitan bunch, and conditions are so bad that even the guards avoid entering the cellblocks. Nevertheless, a film crew is permitted to enter and document the oddly self-sufficient social structure that has evolved within Penal García Moreno’s walls, complete with its own small businesses, primitive social services and democratic elections, and even its own prison. The first half of the film offers a rich account of this distorted mirror image of society, with a parade of prisoners serving as our tour guides. Things come to a head when the prisoners stage a general strike to draw attention to the intolerable conditions. This takes the form of a 48-hour takeover that results in the already critically overcrowded prison being locked down with a large number of visitors, including the film crew, inside. The organisers of the takeover, the prisoners’ committee of the film’s title, struggle to maintain decorum and peace for the duration as tensions mount, hoping against hope that their strategic media event doesn’t explode into violent tragedy. – Andrew Langridge |
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| El Comite: La toma del Penal García Moreno, Ecuador 2006 | |||
Director/Editor: Mateo Herrera 92 mins, DV In Spanish, with English subtitles Canterbury Film Society |
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