Nottingham Contemporary

This two-day documentary film event looks at the roles of filmmaking and the media in challenging public perceptions of incarceration, and encourage the public to think about prison conditions and alternatives to custody.

Captured will include the screening of a number of films – including A Kind of Sisterhood, which highlights the stories of suffering experienced by female political prisoners in the IRA. The screening, which includes a discussion with the film’s director, coincides with the launch of a new book by Azrini Wahidin, Professor of Criminology at Criminal Justice at Nottingham Trent University. The book, Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland, highlights the role of women in the IRA. It explores individual women’s stories, who offer an insight into their brutal treatment in prison; including the gruelling effects of hunger strikes, strip searches and the no-wash protest.

Other screenings will include Sur les Toits, Injustice and Encountering Attica.

The festival has been organised by Professor Wahidin, of the university’s School of Social Sciences; Dr Sophie Fuggle, of the School of Arts and Humanities; and Janna Graham, Head of Public Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary.

Programme

Friday 4 November

1-2.30pm Workshop/Seminar ‘Working with Archives’ led by Nicolas Drolc.

3-4.30pm Workshop/Seminar ‘Film as Method’ led by Michele Devlin, Laurence McKeown and Claire Hackett.

5.30pm Opening of Captured: Documenting Incarceration with welome (tbc)

5.45pm Screening of A Kind of Sisterhood followed by Q&A session with directors Michele Devlin and Claire Hackett.

7.45pm Book Launch of Professor Azrini Wahidin’s Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland – Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience (Palgrave, 2016). Drinks reception hosted by the School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University and Palgrave Macmillan.

Saturday 5 November

10am Screening of Sur les Toits followed by Q&A session with director Nicolas Drolc.

1pm Screening of Injustice

2.45pm Q&A session on ‘Activism and Advocacy’ with director Ken Fero.

4pm Screening of Encountering Attica followed by director Teresa Miller in conversation with a survivor from the 1971 Attica prison riots.

5.30pm Close