The Brig - DaaVeeDee

The Brig (DVD) (*)

~~$23.99~~ $17.97

Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
France ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
68 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Featurette
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Booklet

Movie filmed in 1964 and produced in:
United States ( USA, Canada )

Directed By:
Jonas Mekas

Written By:
Kenneth H. Brown

Actors:
Warren Finnerty ..... Guard
Jim Anderson ..... Guard
Henry Howard ..... Guard
Tom Lillard ..... Guard
James Tiroff ..... Prisoner
Steven Ben Israel ..... Prisoner
Gene Lipton ..... Prisoner
Rufus Collins ..... Prisoner
Michael Elias ..... Prisoner
William Shari ..... Prisoner
Viktor Allen ..... Prisoner
George Bartenieff ..... Prisoner
Gene Gordon ..... Prisoner
Mark Duffy ..... Prisoner
Henry Proach ..... Prisoner

Synopsis:

The Brig is a raw slice of new American cinema filmed in an off-Broadway stage with such brutish authenticity that it won a Venice festival grand prize as best documentary. Part drama, part polemic, with shock-wave sound and a nightmare air that suggests Kafka with a Kodak, the movie does exactly what it sets out to do - seizes an audience by the shirtfront and slams it around from wall to wall for one grueling day in a Marine Corps lockup.

'The Brig' is a modern Inferno. The men who enter it abandon all hope of mercy. Here, hell is a Marine Corps prison in which humiliation and brutality are dished out according to the book, with guards and inmates performing a mad ritual of degradation... A metaphor of protest against man's meaningless inhumanity to man, 'The Brig' by Kenneth H. Brown, began as a production of the Living Theater, New York's most important avant-garde company. When tax collectors closed its tiny second-foor auditorium in Greenwich Village, Jonas Mekas, editor of Film Culture and reporter on the New American Cinema for the Village Voice decided that the play had to be preserved on film. To do this, director Judith Malina and her actors had to break into their own theater during the night for one last performance (with no retakes) for the benefit of Mekas' cameras...
From the moment they awake, the prisoners are at rigid attention. Throughout the men are taunted and beaten by the guards, who often don't even require a pretext for their brutality. What Brown shows so damningly is the insanity that results when a form of government permits men to have other unchecked power over other men. The guards have been turned into sadistic monsters. One is left with the sense of the sheer stupidity of the penal system, for what it accomplishes is not punishment but the destruction of the individual.

This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 04 January, 2018.

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