three. three. three stooges. revolt against videos for your media project and a free meal gone to our t.v. dot com. and again this is all see the headlines. damascus blames on terrorist groups for escalating violence ahead of the cease fire deadline while the one condemned syrian authorities for such has thousands of president assad supporters rallied in the caucus hold marking the ruling party's six tickets brasserie. bahrain security forces crowd down on protesters firing tear gas and water crowds marching in support of an answer government out of sight as the market is facing and my

sentence has been a hunger strike two months now and is being treated at the military hospital. not sanctions to much to back knowledge south declared military leaders step down and face of international pressure only two weeks of the seizing power plant agreed to return the country to constitutional rule in return the nation's west african neighbors promised a niche trade balance and grant amnesty to the military comes out of. the russian prison or return from site and filmmaker and our special report writer present. go on take that sandwich give it to him and stand by. we'll go over the scene a couple of times film director alexei and shoot your new movie about prison life he has won several top prizes a film festivals yes that's it the film director and his actors have no expectation

of public recognition or fame all they really want is to get away from this dismal scenery as soon as possible and never return. that's it thank you they call everybody. the film crews artistic freedom is confined to this high security jail petersburg. the actor's camera man and director. sentences the serious crime. roll call finished return to your area. i'm right you'll toss that snowball from here. film studios run by inmates in russian colonies and not just for fun the aim is to rehabilitate prisoners their involvement in filmmaking is meant to help them reform and start a new life a basic camera is the only piece of equipment at the disposal of the prison

produces the crew is normally made up of inmates who know how to handle video recording this colony is lucky there is a professional film director serving his term among them. i mean it comes competing against the old one american leader once said the thinking is the hardest work theory is media robot which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. and this anyone who has been involved in filmmaking at least once will tell you that would it it's a very exhausting jocko who can pull. no play what if any straightforward baggage lines evidence of school and you will off

their questionable existence it will be some purple school. bowl ring it is because they pictures of ruling families away and letters the room sanish to france piece of schema from the league of the like you. would say and the last movie forgive me won an award at an international contest a film about prison in the dirt so became something of a t.v. personality right cribber field as a film is not about a prison camp. it's a film about treachery love and human integrity from yet eternal truths that stay alive inside and outside prison i'm sure there will come a car of course we can't physically make a film about anything but prison life but i'm still not with him so that's a different story for there were missing. when the prison authorities realized the film directors work so to improve the kohli's image they began to take his work

seriously what's new in his village i'd like to have two shooting areas it's and. ok i'll talk to the chief of the operations section hopefully he can help us aside from that is everything going according to plan yes valarie cheval of the man in charge of education at the colony is also the chief producer of unthaw last movie is it is he who make sure that the films shot in this high security camp don't push the limits of what is permitted all members of the crew get together in the colonies clubhouse they want to discuss a new script and congratulate the film's director on his success of the film festival and the role of is proud to show off the top prize a gold plated watch or russia's ombudsman collected the prize on our behalf the chief warden gave me the wash and said here is the watch and draw on of what others can't wear such watches but you can in mates are not allowed to keep things made of

precious metals here. when he was starting it and fell off had a hard time persuading prisoners to act in his movies they don't need to do it for t.v. and cigarettes at the meeting the director gives a last piece of advice before filming begin once. i've heard it if you thought studious screenplay. whether criminals or law abiding people were all god's creatures. murderers rapists and drug traffickers make up the bulk of the inmates here each has been sentenced to at least eighty years in prison . has already served five years he was charged with murder after a drunken fight. pleaded guilty he would have only been sentenced to six years instead of ten but he denied the charges in court maybe because he truly did not intend to kill anyone although he hoped to avoid punishment altogether.

ninety percent of those who find themselves behind bars try to deny their guilt avoid punishment all of them say they aren't guilty each inmate has a story that as a rule has little in common with the official verdict. tell each other the films they make a clear cut they contain a plain message about good and evil friend and truth. finding a woman for a female role in a male colony is a problem but they make an exception for if necessary and easily for even a child take part in his films. have changed i knew. for the better. and i would say much. has changed.

i miss you terribly i've been looking for what happened. yes you am going to get married. perhaps. is one of the the rules state that she is not to communicate with the inmates but she is ready to risk it because of her love of cinema because of the time they put i know listen here if i'm here or has songs to mark tell the psychological barrier between me and them i l e p in civilian clothes on the days when i shouldn't like now and not hiring so much for my cat even then i realize that sidetracked attention. ok let's see if everything is alright from this angle. of is the male lead in a new movie he has agreed to take part because of the film's parallels with his life. yuri is serving a sentence for murder he spent six years behind bars with another six to go or

paid by the current. come in. my name is alex see my name is a good one. i have a son too he was four years old when i was in prison just. now he is ten we haven't seen each other in well it'll be exactly five years on the first of march. is national blog world after i got into prison my wife often visited me here she would bring me parcels a circle so you. can that lasted for two years but then she told me she was seeing another man. will objecting to that would have been stupid on my part she was young and i had another eleven years to serve

and why should i make her suffer. how old are you. eight. both a political story. and the saddest thing is that i know a debt to my parents i couldn't attend their funerals since my father died the day after the verdict was announced my mother followed him half a year later it's a shame i didn't accompany them on their final journey circles that my wife has left me or that i still have a long term love to serve are the least of my worries. every inmate dreams about the great hollywood romance is shown in the film but in reality nobody ever comes to see the inmates go but off until all of a lexie is even turned down an offer of lloyd's juicy he is merited by his prison filmmaking under such rules inmates are in talking to extra visits from relatives and more parcels. i don't hear about because it's bleak and they see that i see no

point in them. yes wives are allowed to spend more time with their husbands. but i'm not officially married us kim. i have no mother no father no grandmother and no grandfather. who would ever come to me. and the almost twenty two year old son was born by his first wife he lives in a russian city far from here and he never comes to see his father sometimes under all of talks with him over the phone which requires special permission. and it's my fault and them with us when i left them our tomb was just a little boy in the boys of that age need a father more than anything else yes. alexei's daughter victoria is eight years old she was born elsewhere wedlock victoria and her mother

svetlana live in st petersburg they have never come here to see alexei he abandoned them when his daughter was a year in the whole of. aleksey he decided to break those bones she told me she wasn't ready to take responsibility for the child she said the prospect was too much for him it's against him enormously. that you thought that his life would be entirely changed on bearable i said to him. as for me i wanted to prove her family some may not care about their relationships not being formalized but i do very much. the stamp in our past first justifying to our marriage would have meant a lot to me was what is and us said ok. sometimes that's how we parted. after that he got carried away.

this is what victoria wrote on a postcard she sent to her father happy valentine's day adding i love you very much. and snoop valentine's day inmates get together for a poetry recital. on the obvious. the mole on. the. alley sunday presides over a meeting nickname leone he's been generally acclaimed as the best poet in the camp is twenty years of life in prison who produced twenty three thick notebooks of

poetry there are thousands of verses about love your words book when so little people think it should be about what it was like it should work it struck a few good expenditures which make it this year it's usually it's if you're serious. you know what alexander leonel killed seven people in cold blood one of his victims was a woman. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you've learned something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard welcome to the big picture.

alexander leo could hardly be described as a positive character but film director and thrown off could not and found some of the more conflicted history for his first documentary alexander is a camp legend he has crossed poles with the man in charge of the colonies education department valarie shovel off several times both are found themselves in the same high security prisons shovel off as a prison administrator. as an inmate create some i first saw him a long time ago all of the awful good was back when i was serving in a high security jail in the urals was the worst is a strong will to. a poor poor someone to survive in

a russian jail and ensure all the movements from place to place without cracking is nothing to sneeze at. you i have applied for parole the law allows me to do that. i have already served nineteen years out of the total term of twenty five years i was thirty six years old when i was arrested and you know i'm almost. fifty five let's see. the footage is from a legacy a documentary entitled the point of no return of all of his works this is the one film the convict director shot in the hope that people on the other side of the fence would see the main question of the film is addressed to society do they want his fellow inmate leo off to be set free head of time.

preferably a question he's asked in the film as alexander imagine yourself walking around town and coming across your victims' relatives what would be your reaction. frankly talking about this here is pointless i can only hope that they wouldn't recognize me have to so many years i would rather avoid an encounter with them and make sure i never cross their paths. each morning alexander goes through a set of exercises of the car in the special forces to perfect their skills he is a perpetrator by training learn to kill during the war in angola off he was discharged from the armed forces and went on to make short work of his enemies in the same cold manner then make claims he eliminated business partners who had betrayed him. to achieve them and expose the pows more than some a woman had a sixty asian i put her to sleep so to speak and if you press some points on the

human next person will pass out never to wake up again. much of what he says is not true. preferred a free wheeling lifestyle. while he never sought employment and instead took part in drinking bouts with shady characters. and it's not that he murdered people as a result of a brawl was simply he and his drinking companions would make friends with someone and drink with him at his place and then kill him there. was given the death penalty for his killings he strangled most of his victims of a scarf. leo was condemned to die but he was on death row for just two years before president yeltsin introduced a moratorium on capital punishment and nine hundred ninety six. fellow inmates said to me alexander it seems to us that you get life imprisonment i prayed and went to

face my fate when i entered the room and was told i was now in for twenty five years and stead of getting the death sentence i felt like i had been reborn with dry had been stuck in prison for six years by then so another twenty five years was just a trifle. we wanted to meet relatives of his victims and show to them what sort of person lay all of a common. question is whether an inmate can reform here is a man with one thousand years of confinement behind him a man writing poetry demonstrating loyalty to the administration and abiding by the law. man doing all he can to prove that he deserves a release from here. but then he already saw an act of humanity when his sentence was changed now he wants another it's not the right thing to do with the right and i'm still in two minds but that's why we wanted to meet the relatives of

a suspect him to ask them. but the plan didn't come to pass therefore i've been telling him drawn off that his film is incomplete. which. the court turned down the almost pee for parole now he has to serve another five years to whittle away the time he acts in films all of his working on a roll in and a lot of production. is down hark you. look around the tea room. each day some one thousand five hundred come big. come here to the coolies industrial section to see timber. and make plumbing fittings including all souvenirs. all of it will be in floyd tomorrow outside the prison where. most of those who do the hard physical work here see filmmaking as

a way of shocking the routine labor of the pope society. they maintain that the public outside these fences takes little interest in films about prison life alexie and one of concedes that his movies annoys masterpieces like. the girl well i wouldn't go so far as to describe it as a live action film you know it's just fooling around that's all there is to. prison slang and cheap special effects don't help his cause for instance in the movie go the only friend of the main character is a talking cat. andrei. was . it's me chance and it sounds. like the chill i run in while here. i see are scared of your own shadow john she sounds sound module your cat.

this young man works sound engineer a small theater in some peaches. is twenty nine years old he left high security prison only a year ago after six years and so right he had been sentenced to eight in the for a few years for drug trafficking while in prison without a major prize winning phil was one of the main factors that led to his early release. it was prison that paved the way to this theater to be more exact it was a lot. it's had not been for the film we made together and i wouldn't be here now that's for sure i will go with the film festival was chaired by the theatres artistic director he liked our film and gave alexa his business card saying give me a call when you get out of there it so happened that i was the first to get out.

was the camera man in the last production skills he learned in prison his new drug his ambition now is to make movies. but filming costs money and fully realizing his talent is still beyond his means. making a film in prison wasn't much of a problem the guys didn't need much prodding to motivate them they were only too willing to accept t.v. and cigarettes as pay. nowadays all the people working with director of a quite young is new camera man is twenty three years old i was the same age when he was put behind us both fellows were convicted for the same crime drug trafficking. cuban rapper leo mendez is yes now the man serving

a sentence for drug crimes alexei asked him to compose a soundtrack for his new film the convicted film director and thrown off doesn't care much about whether anybody outside needs his films he hopes that his films help leo and other young men learn new skills when they are released the director's wish is that they realize they are stronger more worthwhile things in this life than drugs. they have said i yearn for that day when i am released on parole and the last doctor there are still three years two months to go i've got a hassle and you know i want to return home so very much. so i work hard unst try to be on my best behavior here on much etc i will come to think of it the two years i spent in this call only of taught me to manage my time properly in our choices but i've also been learning new skills from the other inmates is still true that people here know how to teach them which is.

my son he's a successful teaching that one day i told my wife or to me i know what they do in those hanging out so good as i mean drugs and all that stuff via google from the name of course and she said will. i trust him so much i can't imagine him doing anything wrong the more i feel the same way i think cards don't want to fall into the trap. the legacy has come to realize that he was a bad father to his children he left them with their mother at a time when they needed a father most of all he'll be fifty when he is set free in five years toy of that he will have to earn his children's love again. just that he was a self-sufficient personal even a trouble free line. i think he has since taken

a long hard look at his life. sometimes they'd greeks people to make them realize that time is running out. just in that my son was the see me when i left. the gosh i need to do so much to cure chop. wood this prison term. i missed so much. i'm not. alexia off received his first guest in four years. spent lola his college mate for him a gift he treasures most of all memories three hours creep away unnoticed as they

recalled highlights of their college days going to the seaside during the holidays and cutting class to watch new films. alexy decides to send the watch he won for his film forgive me to his salt. there's a new batch of convicts. mark one two. i. i. i am

i i i i i i i i i. i'm.