"Visitors" by Melis Birder
Visitors is a feature length documentary about the
passengers of a charter bus that leaves New York City every weekend for
various prisons located in upstate New York. The film follows some of the
women visitors of these prisons, whose lives have been suspended at the
intersection of confinement and the free world.
There are 70 prisons in New York State. Although 60 percent of all prisoners
in New York State come from New York City, 95 percent of these prisons are
located upstate, in remote rural towns and villages, like Attica, Dannemora,
and Malone. Every Friday night about 800 people, mostly women and
children, almost all of them African American and Latino, gather at Columbus
Circle in Manhattan and board buses. Depending on the destination, the trips
can take 8 or 10 hours one way. Visitors arrive at their designated prison
early the next morning, allowing enough time for the slow procession. They
then spend a good part of a weekend afternoon with an imprisoned family-
member or friend. By late afternoon, they are riding on the bus back to
Manhattan, where they sometimes arrive after midnight.
The film received a grant from Sundance Film Institute.
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