Voices From Inside

In 1992, German-born theater artist Karina Epperlein started teaching a weekly drama class for inmates at a federal women's prison. Voices From Inside is a highly emotional and deeply affecting record of her experiences and those of four of her students. Using an impressionistic mix of scenes from the workshops, performances of students, and stories of the four women and their children, Epperlein paints a complex and often unspeakably sad picture of lives gone astray and wasted behind bars. The eloquence and spirit of these four women as they put their experiences, both outside and inside prison, into poetry, dance, and song, make this fate all the more sad. Epperlein's video is strongest when it lets the women's stories unfold by themselves. The video is much less successful when it attempts to polemicize or draw broad conclusions about the penal system or the justice received by the featured women. These are four individuals doing long, hard time. The fact that the particulars of their crimes are only vaguely discussed seems like a rather disingenuous way of garnering the sympathy of the viewer. We're told, for example, that Dylcia was active in the radical Filipino nationalist group, FALN (she's referred to as a political prisoner throughout), but we're never told the real nature of her crime. However, it's safe to say she certainly wasn't sent to the pen for peaceful or even rancorous protest! Despite these few shortcomings, Voices From Inside is a unique and worthwhile video which would be a good choice for public and academic library collections interested in women's issues, ethnic studies, or U.S. social problems. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)