The Art of Incarceration – Melbourne Documentary Festival

World Premiere
The Art of Incarceration

A personal insight into three artists and the deeply ingrained incarceration epidemic of Australia’s first people. Debut feature documentary produced, written and directed by Alex Siddons. From deep inside a Victorian Correctional Centre, feature documentary The Art of Incarceration provides a personal insight into three Indigenous inmates and the path their artistic expressions take them.

On Sunday 28 July, the film will have it is world premiere at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival to a sell-out audience. An encore screening has been scheduled for Wednesday 31 July. Given unprecedented prison access to Fulham Correctional Centre in Gippsland, emerging filmmaker Alex Siddons, tracks inmates Christopher, Troy and Robby’s experience with the Indigenous Arts in Prisons and Community program run by not for profit organisation The Torch. The film is an uncompromising insight into the inmates’ quest for cultural identity and spiritual healing as they prepare for The Torch’s annual Confined exhibition and for life on the outside.

This narrative documentary both analyses and humanises the over-representation of Indigenous Australians within the prison system, whilst seeking answers and striving for solutions. The film clearly and profoundly explores greatly misunderstood issues such as cultural disconnection, inter-generational trauma, addiction and institutionalization. Art provides the inmates with hope and an opportunity to transcend their cycles of imprisonment whilst strengthening their fractured connection to culture and identity.