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DOING TIME, DOING VIPASSANA
Directed & Written by: Eilona Ariel & Ayelet Menahemi.
Produced by: Eilona Ariel.
Director of Photography & Edited by: Ayelet Menahemi.
Music by: Ady Cohen & Ari Frankel.
Released by: imMEDIAte Pictures.
Language: English.
Country of Origin: India/Israel. 58 min. Not Rated.
Narrated by: Paul Samson

In India, it's not uncommon to see cows squatting outside the gates of an upscale hotel or dirt-nosed street children tapping on the windows of expensive cars. Israeli filmmakers Eilona Ariel and Ayelet Menahemi are mesmerized by the stark and contrasting visual images that bombard the senses in this South Asian country. In their film Doing Time, Doing Vipassana, they introduce us to the effects of a meditation technique called Vipassana with a scene of a prisoner crying like a child in the arms of his guard.

In 1993, Kiran Bedi, the inspector general of prisons in India, was searching for an effective reform to that country's brutal penal system. She was desperate to find a solution, and in true karmic style, a chance meeting with a prison guard led her to explore the technique of Vipassana. The film takes us inside the walls of Tihar Prison, a maximum security facility on the outskirts of New Delhi. It was here that Bedi implemented a 10-day Vipassana course. The results were dramatic and went on to bring about a psychological change within the prisoners. For the first time, many of them felt a tinge of remorse for their crimes. A thousand more prisoners took the course the following year.

How the courses are set up and the complications in taking on such a mammoth project are explained. Candid interviews of Bedi and the prisoners themselves illuminate the power of this technique. In a moving revelation, one prisoner admits the course almost made his prison experience worthwhile. And in another sequence, the filmmakers use a frenzied montage of images to take us into the mind of a Vipassana student, allowing us a glimpse of the force of this meditation. Though the pace of this 52-minute film is somewhat slow, the content is revealing. Preeti Mankar
July 15, 2005

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