Jailhouse rock: In Songbirds, prisoners' personal narratives are turned into songs. Photo courtesy Hot Docs.
By anyone’s standards, Sam’s life has been a misery. As a kid, her monstrous father forced her and her siblings to watch him beat and rape their mother; he also beat and raped Sam for most of her childhood. As an adult, she was drawn to drugs, alcohol and abusive men. Sam finally bottomed out when, in quick succession, she lost custody of her kids, stabbed her brother during a fight and then set fire to a house where her husband had attempted to blackmail her into sex in exchange for helping her get her children back. Yet somehow, when she sings a Dido-like lament in her sweet, steady but untrained voice, she manages to briefly transcend all the ugliness and sorrow, even as she recounts it: “A husband’s fist / a Picasso face / my sister pushing it / back into place.”
Sam is one of the subjects of British director Brian Hill’s 2005 film Songbirds, a “docu-musical” about the women of Downview Prison in Surrey, England. Hill and his production team handed over transcripts of interviews they had done with several inmates to poet-lyricist Simon Armitage and composer Simon Boswell, who transformed the stories into songs. Hill then shot the women performing them in music video style – there’s a Streets-inspired rap, a Caribbean-infused Fosse-style production number and a gentle lullaby. On paper, the premise reads like a treatment for a cheesy reality show, but the offbeat form suits the subject matter perfectly. As the women sing of petty crimes, getting high, poverty, abuse and drug muling (“You can mule it in your booze / You can mule it in your shoes / You can mule it in your gut / You can mule it in your butt”), their stories become something greater than a litany of social problems. Through music, the women morph into fallen, tragic heroines – by turns maddening, heartbreaking and even amusing.
Hill says he came to the hybrid form “partly by accident and partly through evolution.” Ten years ago, he began experimentally adding poetry to his documentaries with the help of Armitage, a parole officer turned writer. Then in films like Drinking for England (1998) – about alcoholism (“our national pastime,” jokes Hill) – and Feltham Sings (2002), about a juvenile detention centre, the pair began to develop songs with their subjects, in place of traditional interviews. In Songbirds, they expanded the form further – most of the film is sung. And though the documentary’s unexpectedly captivating performances are decidedly unpolished, this moving and utterly original film has become one of the must-see offerings at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival.
Q: What does a song reveal about your subjects that a straightforward interview might not?
Songbirds director Brian Hill. Photo courtesy Hot Docs.
A: First of all, in a film like Songbirds, it’s about abuse and neglect and rape and drugs. Fairly grim and familiar territory. If you did that in a straightforward way it may not attract an audience. Who wants to see that? If you have the element of a musical, the music leavens the mix. Secondly, if you’re dealing with people who are marginalized and people who have committed crimes, no matter how liberal you are and how sympathetic, I think there’s a tendency to define people by what they’ve done: she’s a crackhead, or she’s a prostitute. It stops us from seeing anything else about them. If you get people singing, they’re actually pretty vulnerable. It gives them another dimension: this is a person who has talent, creativity and is brave enough to stand up and do this.
A: Yeah, a couple of people who make traditional documentaries have been kind of sniffy about it – as if there isn’t any documentary that isn’t to some extent constructed. I think we did get at the truth. The women were much more involved in the process than in a traditional documentary. They okayed all the lyrics and had a sense of ownership over the project. I do think the women are magnified. The music does give them an extra dimension. Take Maggie, for instance, the Irish traveller in the film, who sings a country and western song and then a lullaby for her children who’ve been taken into care. Maggie is a crackhead. She is a bogus caller – I don’t know if you know that expression in Canada, but it’s a person who knocks on the doors of elderly people and then invites themselves in and robs them. It’s horrible what Maggie does. But she’s something else, too. She’s a mother who grieves for her children. And she’s someone with talent. She can really sing. And that’s the truth about Maggie. She’s all of those things.
A: Having spent time [conducting interviews] in men’s prisons, I was quite surprised and pleased to see how different it is in women’s prisons. There’s a lot of talk of sex and a lot of sex going on and it’s all very open, which you don’t see in a men’s prison. And there’s a lot of emotional support, which is great to see. I think a lot of women decide to lead as normal lives as possible, have friendships and help each other. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t fights and rivalries and jealousies. There are, of course. But on the whole, they’re more caring than men would be.
With someone like Mary [one of the inmates featured in the film], who calls herself Scary Mary, she looks about 90 but is 35 and has only spent about two years of the last 20 out of prison. She’s completely institutionalized. She can’t function outside. In the final verse of her song she says, “lock me up and throw away the key.” Life outside is awful for her. It’s crackhouses and violent crime and neglect. Inside, she has a bed to sleep in, three meals a day and a relatively safe environment. But all that said, it’s still a prison. And it’s an awful indictment of any society that some people prefer to be in prison than out.
A: Yes, it’s true, each of the women made a choice to do what they did, but given their backgrounds, in a way, they never stood a chance. There aren’t many women in prison who come from stable, loving families. That tells you something. And, yes, it was quite odd, being a man and hearing their stories. For one thing, they were very intimate. It was particularly difficult with Sam, because Sam doesn’t like men much. It took some time for her to trust me. I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet here, but I don’t think she’d ever met a man before who wasn’t abusive or cruel to her. Gradually, she got to trust me.
Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
CBC
does not endorse and is not responsible
for the content of external sites
- links will open in new window.
More from this Author
Rachel Giese
- Whoa, baby
- Ellen Page and Diablo Cody deliver big laughs in Juno
- Sound effects
- Oliver Sacks probes music's mysterious influence on the brain
- Art in exile
- A conversation with Chilean author Isabel Allende
- The long view
- A new photo exhibit honours Canada's role in the Second World War
- The write stuff
- An interview with Giller Prize winner Elizabeth Hay
