Prison Songs

This is a documentary musical that gets inside the major Australian issue of Indigenous incarceration. First Nation Australians are 27 times more likely to be imprisoned than other citizens. This huge jail rate occurs across Australia but is worse in the north of the country. The filmmakers spent months inside Berrimah Prison in northern Australia. Here over 80 percent of inmates are Indigenous. They are culturally diverse, many speaking little English, but music is part of all their lives. Prison Songs is structured as both a documentary and a musical. The story chronicles the lives and circumstances of Berrimah’s serving inmates. They sing and dance musical sequences as prison life goes on around them. This expression through music gives a new dimension to these normally unheard or ignored prisoners. Audiences strongly engage with this film. Since screening on SBSTV it has been voted one of 2015’s best Australian TV shows in any genre. It has been nominated widely for festivals and awards. It won the 2015 Banff World Media Congress award for best humanitarian documentary, has been made into a live stage show − and it is now the centrepiece of an ongoing national campaign to address the Indigenous incarceration situation in Australia.