ALCINE's short films arrived this week at Madrid 1 and Madrid 2 prisons as part of the fifth edition of Corto Prisión (Prison Short Film), a project of the Alcalá de Henares Film Festival / Community of Madrid that brings part of its program to the prison population each year.
"Both the inmates and the staff receive it very positively every year," says Pedro Toro, artistic director of ALCINE. This year, Corto Prisión screened a total of six short films at Madrid 1 and Madrid 2, selected by the festival and by the prison staff based on educational and rehabilitation criteria.
“We try to ensure that the short films are engaging and spark debate. We also want to include shorts from the National Competition; some have even won awards. And we try to give visibility to some shorts that, although they didn't make it into the official selection, we found very interesting because of their themes, such as Juanita, which was screened at ALCINE Igualdad and also at Corto Prisión,” says Pedro Toro.
After the screenings, inmates from Madrid 1 and Madrid 2 prisons participated in a discussion with some of the short film creators. Miriam Ouchi, the cinematographer for Juanita, was one of the participants in the Prison Short Film session at Madrid 1. “It was one of the best screenings I’ve ever attended; it was very enriching to hear the reactions, participate in the subsequent discussion, and share the reflections,” Ouchi explained.
For Alejandro Fertero, director of Soforem, it was also his first experience with Prison Short Film. “It was a very special screening, in which hundreds of topics arose from the short film that hadn’t come up in other discussions,” the director noted. In the case of Soforem, “they felt a connection to the scenes in the courtroom, and because the protagonist has to prove that he isn’t what some documents say he is,” Fertero added.
“At ALCINE we continue working with all audiences in Alcalá, without leaving anyone behind, and in this case the inclusion of the prison population of Alcalá-Meco seems fundamental to us and it is a project in which we always collaborate very gladly,” says Pedro Toro.
