Arcana

The final year before the closure of Valparaiso prison. In this huge “town within a town”, hundreds of inmates are crammed into run-down cells, amble across the vast central courtyard, move around the corridors in groups. Loudspeakers mechanically blare out roll calls and orders. In its hundred and fifty years of existence, this city of prisoners has given birth to a terrible form of “culture” : its set of practices, itineraries, customs and dialects. It is a culture opaque for anyone from the “outside”, a network of relationships and codes that the filmmaker can but hint at, mainly through working on sounds. An inmate repeatedly challenges him to understand or even get close to prison reality. The old prison of Valparaiso was finally closed in April 1999. For the filmmaker, it is now the centre of his multi-disciplinary project, involving the present film, a book and a web site reflecting the various dimensions of the place and its history.