Ghosts … of the Civil Dead

John Hillcoat, an exceptional Australian talent with a filmography as slim as it is impressive, creates a disturbing vision of a video-monitored hell in his powerful debut. His partner in crime: music legend Nick Cave, whose unbridled performance as a deranged and rebellious prison inmate, according to Hillcoat, even frightened the ex-convicts who appeared in the film. Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead was often described as ‘futuristic’ when it was released, but it is based on detailed research into high-security prisons and their worrying development as privately run businesses: "Welcome to Central Industrial. We are the future." With sober, raw harshness and a documentary style, Hillcoat reconstructs the systematic escalation of conflicts in a prison – until the inevitable, bloody revolt against the supposed oppressors. Surveillance and punishment. (C.H.)