Charles Dickens, during his tour of America in the early 1840s, visited the bleak Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and later described its form of incarceration as "men buried alive."
    Dickens's depiction is one of the historical nuggets excavated by Christine Bowditch for her engaging video documentary Eastern State Penitentiary.
    Eastern State opened in 1829 as a "humane experiment," the product of Quaker belief that the enforced discipline of solitary confinement could rehabilitate criminals. It housed both men and women in isolated cells under a code of silence so strict that guards roamed cell blocks wearing thick socks over their shoes to monitor prisoner compliance.
    Corruption and allegations of prisoner abuse surfaced soon after Eastern State opened, and the "experiment" was eventually deemed a failure. By the late 19th century attitudes about crime and punishment hardened, and prisoner conditions worsened. In the 1930s, Eastern State was transformed into a maximum security facility and briefly housed Al Capone. The prison closed in 1970.
    Bowditch's effective use of architectural drawings and period lithographs constructs a lively visual telling. And in the style familiarized by filmmaker Ken Burns, Bowditch uses a stable of "actors" to represent the persons associated with the prison over the years. (Several of the voices heard are those of Colby professors.)
    The video is available at www.forgedimages.com.