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Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
In America's disastrously crowded, increasingly privatized prisons, "rehabilitation" has become a dirty word and "prison reform" an oxymoron. Not so in India, as this brief (52 minutes), extremely compelling 1997 documentary shows. Four years ago, Israeli filmmakers Ayetelet Menahemi and Eilona Ariel were granted unlimited access to study the introduction of the ancient Buddhist meditation technique of vipassana into Tihar, one of India's largest (10,000 inmates), most notorious prisons. Western cynics might dismiss as loony the concept of armies of thieves and killers -- many from rival religions and castes -- sitting together in silent thought for 10 days, but the film offers irrefutable evidence that it works in interviews with prisoners, guards, and administrators. Some of the changes are almost unimaginable -- a triple-murderer begging forgiveness of the relatives of the people he killed and pledging to protect and support them for life, a hysterically crying prisoner being unabashedly comforted by a guard. Returning a sense of self-worth to society's discards and reminding all that prisoners are still people points to the possibility of a worldwide reform movement. Indeed, encouraged by the successes in India, advocates of vipassana have already brought the technique to a prison in Seattle, where early results have been encouraging. (Watch for another film on this subject sometime this year.) With any luck the strategy will spread and America's love affair with incarcerating and dehumanizing vast numbers of its citizens -- and profiting from the process -- can come to a well-deserved end.

-- Gary Morris

Doing Time, Doing Vipassana screens at noon on Saturdays and Sundays on an open run at the Roxie, 3117 16th St. (at Valencia). Tickets are $6; call 863-1087.