Pedagogy Behind and Beyond Bars: Critical Perspectives on Prison Education in Contemporary Documentary Film from Argentina

Abstract

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, I argue 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 reinserción (reintegration) of prisoners into society. Analysing the documentaries El almafuerte (Martínez Cantó, Cabrera, and Persano 2009), 13 puertas (Rubio 2014), Lunas cautivas (Paradiso 2012) and Pabellón 4 (Gachassin 2017), I draw on insights from film studies and criminology to show how these films provide intersectional and structural critiques of imprisonment. “Touristic” and affective encounters between prison-internal and -external agents 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.