Venue: On-lineTuesday 18th May from 17.00 to 18.00


Join us for Crime and the Camera with acclaimed documentary film-maker Rex Bloomstein as part of The Manchester CRIME and JUSTICE Film Festival 2021.

During his talk, Rex will discuss the technical and moral challenges faced in attempting to capture reality in penal settings. He will show excerpts from his pioneering body of work spanning five decades that has exposed the realities of prison life and addressed aspects of the English penal system previously closed to public scrutiny. This includes films such as The Sentence, Release, Prisoners’ Wives, Parole, Lifers and Strangeways, which won two British Academy Awards.   This was followed by Strangeways Re-VisitedLifer – Living With Murder and Kids Behind Bars. He asks did we change anything for the better or help improve conditions? Did we increase public awareness when the prison population, the largest in Western Europe. has doubled. When society seems as firmly fixed on punishment as ever?

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This event will be introduced by Sir Martin Narey, the former Director General of the Prison Service, first Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service and Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University’s  Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU). Martin was inspired to join the Service after watching Rex’s 1980 BBC documentary about Strangeways, Manchester’s then notorious Victorian prison.

Rex’s talk will be followed by a Q&A chaired by Kevin Wong, Festival Director