Edgar Barens

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Edgar Barens will screen his Academy Award-nominated film, “Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall,” at Northeastern Illinois University on Wednesday, March 11.

The screening, hosted by Northeastern’s Psychology Club and Generativity Club, begins at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a Q&A with the director. The event is free and open to the public in Alumni Hall, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. in Chicago.

“Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall” is a 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, Jack Hall, and the hospice volunteers, they themselves prisoners, who care for him.

“Prison Terminal” draws from footage shot over a six-month period behind the walls of Iowa State Penitentiary and provides an account of how the hospice experience can touch even the forsaken lives of the incarcerated. It was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary short-subject in 2014.

Barens is a media specialist at the Jane Addams Center for Social Policy and Research in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Jane Addams College of Social Work.