Pedagogy behind and beyond Bars: Critical Perspectives on Prison Education in Contemporary Documentary Film from Argentina

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Since 2008, numerous Argentine documentary films have explored the complexities of prison education. Prison education documentaries from other countries usually focus overwhelmingly on the possible success of “rehabilitation.” In contrast, this article argues that contemporary Argentine prison education documentaries encourage critical, at times quasi-abolitionist, perspectives on imprisonment by challenging both punitive attitudes and liberal beliefs in the <jats:italic>reinserción</jats:italic> (reintegration) of prisoners into society. Analyzing the documentaries <jats:italic>El almafuerte</jats:italic> (dir. Roberto Sebastián Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera, and Andrés Martínez Cantó, Argentina, 2009), <jats:italic>13 puertas</jats:italic> (dir. David Rubio, Argentina, 2014), <jats:italic>Lunas cautivas</jats:italic> (dir. Marcia Paradiso, Argentina, 2012), and <jats:italic>Pabellón 4</jats:italic> (dir. Diego Gachassin, Argentina, 2017), it draws on insights from film studies and criminology to show how these films provide intersectional and structural critiques of imprisonment. “Touristic” and affective encounters between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people serve to challenge comfortable viewing positions predicated on internal-external carceral and cinematic divides. These films teach spectators that outside spaces, people, and institutions are all central to the meaning, problems, and incoherence of incarceration in Argentina.</jats:p>