USA,
1989, 85 min
Shown in 1990
CREDITS
- dir
-
Nina Rosenblum
- prod
-
Alexandra White
- cam
-
Nancy Schreiber, Haskell Wexler
- mus
-
Nona Hendryx
- source
-
Original Cinema, 432 Park Ave. So.#705, New York, NY 10016, USA, FAX: 212-685-2625
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Alexandra White attended the screening.
OTHER
Within the borders of the American conscience, the political prisoner is an anomaly belonging elsewhere, the casualty of another tumultuous time or country. The official government line: we have no political prisoners. With her powerful and important documentary, Nina Rosenblum casts off our blinders. Narrated by Susan Sarandon, Through the Wire divulges the existence of the first all-women top security prison in the U.S. for political prisoners: the Female High Security Unit (HSU) in Lexington, Kentucky. In October 1986 the first three prisoners were delivered to the HSU—Susan Rosenberg, Sylvia Baraldini, and Alejandrina Torres. All activists whose political convictions are grounded in the significant events of the ’60s, their combined sentences total 136 years. Placed in isolation and subjected to serious human rights violations, each woman speaks with candor about her personal history, as well as the conditions she is forced to endure. Some of the film's most moving passages touch on the evolution of their political activism. Interviews with penal authorities denying HSU's raison d'être are juxtaposed with testimony from family members, friends, lawyers, and others involved in exposing the situation. Undoubtedly, the strongest counterpoint to the official version is the women themselves—the magnitude of HSU's effects is gradual, cumulative, indelibly horrific. In June 1988, organizations, including Amnesty International, finally succeeded in shutting down the HSU. Rosenberg, Baraldini, and Torres were transferred to other prisons. But their story is not yet over.
—Laura Thielen
FACTOID #361
John Huston, director of classics The Maltese Falcon and The Misfits, was honored with a Festival tribute in 1968. His daughter Anjelica received the Peter J. Owens Award in 1991; The Dead, one of the father-daughter duo’s collaborations, screened at her onstage interview.
