Join us for the Antiprison Days!
27-29 October 2017

Przychodnia Skłot // Cafe Kryzys

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Read here to get more info about the presentations and discussions during 4th Warsaw Anti-prison Days

All meetings and discussions will be translated to English.

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Sunday 29th of October, 6pm. / Przychodnia Squat

Better this World, 2011, 82 min.
documentary

Two childhood friends David McKay (22) and Bradley Crowder (23) are preparing for protests during Republican National Convention in 2008. They are accompanied by a new member of the group, Brandon Darby. A renown radical left wing activist, who helped to organize grass roots militant support group for hurricane Katrina victims, is now trying to install more direct action approach into the younger comrades‘ way of thinking. The trip to St. Paul, minnessota ends dramatically for the two texas friends, with arrest and accusation of domestic terror. Shockingly, their mentor and informal leader Darby turns out to be a police informant, sent out to monitor the group’s plans before the convention.

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Art in Prisons is a project aiming to popularise community work in
prisons initiated by contemporary artists. For the first time in Poland
joint workshops involving artists and inmates have been carried out on
such a large scale. Classes, discussions, lectures and workshops,
prepared by artists and social activists, have taken place at various
Polish prisons.

The project, developed as an integrated participative action, is meant
not only to help rehabilitate the inmates and prepare them for a return
to life outside, but also to provoke potential recipients to reflect on
the contemporary notion of punishment, its long-term rationale, and its
role, if any, in overhauling the convicts’ personalities and value
systems.

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Saturday 27th of October 7 pm / Przychodnia Skłot
‘Justice’ (‘Justiça’), 2004, 101 min.
documentary

(Unfotuntey there will be no English translation available for this movie! It will be  in brazilian portuguese with a polish reader)

Maria Ramos sets up her camera inside a criminal court in Rio de Janeiro to follow the daily routine of the people who meet there every day. We also get to see a judge, a public defender and an accused, in their lives outside the courtroom, and this simple act – of juxtaposing the court with the outside world – perfectly illustrates the significance of a broader social context in which justice is carried out. This also raises the fundamental question of whom and what, in effect, does the justice system serve. Especially in cases like those judged in front of our very eyes: accessory to theft, possession of drugs and weapons, and other relatively minor offences.
The film’s straightforward observational approach, lacking any voice-over narration, gradually succeeds in revealing a broader social picture, one involving clear implications of police corruption, an oppressive judicial system that basically seems designed to punish the poor for petty crimes, and a penal system characterized by horrifically inhumane conditions. In a very compelling way, JUSTICE reveals the legal system as a sort of public theater dramatizing the social relations and power structures of Brazilian society at large.

The topic of prison system in poland is still considered a social taboo and it is still common to paint a black picture of those behind bars. At the same time, the authorities are enforcing the policy of fear to justify the implementation of gradually more strict laws aiming at all those opposing their authoritarian intentions.

In west europe and the us the anti-prison campaigns are naturally connected with social fights in others fields: fighting for workers’ laws, fighting against land usurpation and elimination of small farmers, supporting immigrants, protecting environment, fighting for the tenants rights and many more. In poland if this topic exists at all, it is still a newborn rather than taking its toll.

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