Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

Description

Edgar Barens, Director

#9790   Prison Terminal is a moving documentary that breaks through the walls of one of America’s oldest maximum security prisons to tell the story of the final months in the life of a terminally ill prisoner and the hospice volunteers, they themselves prisoners, who cared for him. 

The film draws from footage shot over a six-month period behind the walls of the Iowa State Penitentiary. It provides a fascinating and often poignant account of how the hospice experience can profoundly touch even the forsaken lives of the incarcerated. A no-nonsense look at the aging population in America’s prisons and how one group helps prisoners die with dignity.

This Academy Award nominated short film has assisted in jumpstarting numerous prison hospice programs throughout the correctional system. The perfect film for helping correctional facilities develop effective hospice programs that also can change the lives of incarcerated hospice volunteers. Documents one of the few positive programs that exists today behind bars in hopes that other facilities will emulate the prisoner run hospice program and lessen the impact and instill much needed dignity to dying in prison for all concerned.

39 minutes. 2013. $195.00. SPECIAL: 5 copies for $899.00. Includes downloadable posters, fliers, discussion guide, and manuals for setting up a prison hospice program.

Click here for video clip.

REVIEW COMMENTS

“A reverent and shattering experience, made with immense compassion and without an atom of dishonesty.- Salon

“A profoundly tender experience.” – The Boston Globe

“[An] impressive balancing act, poised between an intimate portrait of an incarcerated World War II veteran and an overview of the prison’s hospice system for the terminally ill…Unflinching, thorough, plainspoken, and humane.”- Chicago Reader

“Few [viewers] will fail to be moved by the younger men who care for [Jack Hall]” The men clearly have a vision of how our prisons”could deal more humanely with those who, whatever their crimes, need companionship after decades of exclusion from society.” ” The Hollywood Reporter

“”Hall”s hospice experience is an excellent means by which [director Edgar Barens] can honestly portray the prison system. Prison Terminal hardly masks the brutal realities of the penitentiary, but its warm presentation of the inmate volunteers of the hospice and the interaction between prisoners and guards (and the families of guards) emphasizes the humanity of everyone involved, including the convicted felons.” ” Nonfics

“ Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall transcends classification; it is more than a film about prison, and suffering or death. It is a deeply layered story of how the human spirit overcomes the greatest fear of all prisoners – the degradation and isolation of dying alone in prison. This stunning film helps us to gain compassion for those that we both fear and ostracize.”- Susan Rosenberg, Human rights activist, adjunct professor, award-winning writer

“The simple, stark scenes of lifers tending to other lifers shakes a lot of assumptions about prison life and makes a quiet point about the rising number of elderly inmates in America”s prisons.”- The Salt Lake Tribune

“Highly Recommended.”– Educational Media Reviews Online

“A powerful portrait that touches on a wide range of issues, this is highly recommended.” – Video Librarian

“Prison Terminal is a remarkably brave and unflinching film, and its short running time makes it brisk and powerful. Jack and the prison provided unprecedented access to a poignant process that had no fixed timetable. However one feels about homicide (and it is difficult not to have some empathy with Jack’s motives) or the death penalty, this memorable and emotional film demands that we think about the consequences of our sentencing policies and of our treatment of people whom we have condemned to life and death in jail.” – Anthropology Review Database

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