For the final issue of SVLLY(wood) volume.1, we explore the ‘beauty and brutality’ of women in prisons and the politics of captivity in cinema with issue.3: INCARCERATION.

In issue.3, we’ve curated another special dispatch of film criticism’s best emerging voices that seek to uncover the ‘beauty and brutality’ behind women in captivity in the moving image. Willow Maclay, who contributed in issue.1 THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE REDUX, returns with a essay on the visual language behind cult classic, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972) and the recurring tropes of Women in Prisons (commonly referred to as W.i.P). We also profile Chinonye Chukwu’s Ohio based filmmaking collaborative, Pens to Pictures which teaches and empowers incarcerated women to make their own short films, from script to screen. NYC based writer and programmer, Tayler Montague investigates non-verbal communication of black womanhood in prison cinema in underrated films such as Civil Brand (2002) and Woman Thou Art Loosed (2004) while London based writer and co-creator of Eye Want Change film festival, Jade Jackman reflects on the making of her 2018 BFI Future Film nominated short documentary, Calling Home, centering on a female asylum seeker inside Yarl’s Wood detention centre. In a photo-essay, recent Brown University graduate and film critic, Devika Girish explores a rare female-centric Hindi drama Bandini (1963) while our founding editor (that’s me!) interviews socially engaged documentary filmmaker, Brett Story on her stunning debut feature, The Prison in 12 Landscapes (2016). Harvard PhD student and author of 2018’s critically acclaimed anti-prison book, “Carceral Capitalism”, Jackie Wang is featured in our new segment: BAD BITCHES LINK UP! Critical Resistance assists young radicals on how to get involved with prison abolishment and The New Inquiry encourages readers to take advantage of their new Bail Bloc software, a cryptocurrency scheme against bail in our new Q&A edition.