Songbirds

I found "Songbirds" to be an excellent film featuring great music of unique and uncommon themes.

This documentary portrays the heartrending lives and intimate experiences of women trapped behind the tangible and emotional bars that constitute their daily existence.

The featured women share personal pain and hope through music, in an array of styles and approaches. While some songs seem staged--presented in the fashion of a 'musical'--others feature raw emotion-driven performances by artists whose voices would most certainly never be heard, had it not been for this cinematic representation.

It makes one wonder if confinement quashes dreams of creative expression or strengthens them.

This is a documentary about a women's prison in the UK. It tells the stories of several women. Some of them are there because they had unfortunate childhoods that led to bad choices as adults. Some are there because of just poor decisions without any heavy back story. Many are there (from foreign countries) because they got caught smuggling drugs ("mules".) I went into the theatre not expecting much, except that I'd probably get depressed. This is, however, a very different kind of film. For one thing, the women sing songs about their lives, in various styles, ranging from hip hop to almost operatic. The singing is extraordinarily good, well choreographed, and well filmed.

Also, we get detailed stories from a dozen or so women about what they did to get locked up, and how their lives evolved. This also is fascinating, but of course also disturbing. Many of these women were abused in childhood.

But there are also other horrifying little facts that fall out of the stories. There are two women from France who got 18 years (!) for drug smuggling for professional drug dealers, but there is also a woman who murdered her neighbor in cold blood and got three and a half years! Very scary legal system.

I highly recommend this film as valuable social insight, but it's not for the weak of heart -- very gritty.

In HMP Downview there are hundreds of women from all over the world, inside for various crimes, for various periods and with various stories. Following up the success of Feltham Sings and the failure of Pornography: The Musical, Brian Hill and Simon Armitage turn their view to women in a British prison, providing them with a chance to talk to the camera and also putting their experiences into songs. I approached this with mixed feelings since the last two films had been brilliant and rubbish respectively. Happily this film fell much closer to Feltham than Pornography and producing an engaging, moving and interesting film.

Some of the women are a bit hard to care about and even their version of their stories made me think "well, you got what you deserved" but the majority of them are interesting and drew sympathy for them from me. Not necessarily sympathy for their crime but sympathy for their situations and lack of options. I didn't particularly care for Mary who never managed to get away from her drug use at age 15 and has now become institutionalised. I was quite moved by Theresa's story but when I realised she only got 3.5 years then I didn't feel that bad for punishment – only that she will bare the scars of her crime for much, much longer. The two French smugglers amazed me at the size of their sentence but it was the segment about the mules. This section contained most of the depressing tales and given that 40% of the women in the prison are in for it, you do have to wonder if the right people got punished – like Mary said, some of them are there because they were betrayed by the smugglers so that a woman on the same flight carrying more drugs would be able to get in unnoticed.

The songs are mostly good and, unlike Pornography, they contain a real feeling and power. Not everyone is a great singer but they buy into what they are singing and that really helps. Armitage's lyrics are good value as they contain feeling as well as humour. Hill's direction is good and he mixes some nice shots with plenty of the women being natural and relaxed; some small sections are unnecessary and rather crude but mostly he does it all very well.

Overall an engaging and interesting film that was quite touching at points. The songs/lyrics are good and the women tell their stories with feeling and honesty. I suppose if you are fairly right wing then you might struggle to care about the women or what they are saying but I would like to think that the majority of people will be interested and engaged by the people and their stories.