THE MARK OF CAIN DVD
(street: 03.25.08)

**In Russian with English subtitles** Sailing ships, stars, angels and executioners – THE MARK OF CAIN chronicles the vanishing practice and language of Russian Criminal Tattoos. Captured in some of Russia’s most notorious prisons, the film traces the animus of the flowers of this carnal art by way of the brutality of its origins -- the penitentiary and the criminal environment. Incisive interviews with prisoners, guards, and criminologists reveal the secret language of The Zone and The Code of Thieves.

The prisoners of the Stalinist Gulag developed a complex social structure that incorporated highly symbolic tattooing as a mark of rank. The very existence of these inmates at prisons and forced labor camps was treated by the state as a deep secret, and their tattoo art was considered a forbidden topic.

In the last decade, Russia's prison population has exploded; overcrowding has reached unimaginable proportions. The most conservative estimates suggest that in the last decades, over thirty million of Russia's inmates have had tattoos even though the process is against the law inside prison. In Russian prisons, tattooing emerged as a visual mode of communication linked with social division. The Mark of Cain tells the story of a fading art form and how that practice's death reflects transition in broader Russian society.