FACING FEAR & PRISON TERMINAL: THE LAST DAYS OF PRIVATE JACK HALL

BYOD: Bring Your Own Doc

Episode 128

Episode Synopsis

2014 Oscar Short Documentary Nominees FACING FEAR and PRISON TERMINAL: THE LAST DAYS OF PRIVATE JACK HALL are discussed with trailer footage and more from their filmmakers. PRISON TERMINAL director Edgar Barens guides us through the prison hospice experience of Jack Hall, while FACING FEAR director/producer Jason Cohen and film subject Matthew Boger share Matthew’s experience as a victim of a hate crime that has made an unlikely and heartfelt reconciliation with his attacker. It is a great look at two of the year’s best short documentaries on the world’s only all doc talk show, BYOD.

Guest Bio

FACING FEAR: Worlds collide when a former neo-Nazi skinhead and the gay victim of his hate crime attack meet by chance 25 years after the incident that dramatically shaped both of their lives. Together, they embark on a journey of forgiveness that challenges both to grapple with their beliefs and fears, eventually leading to an improbable collaboration…and friendship.

Jason Cohen has produced and directed all formats of film and television on projects that cover a broad range of topics over the past 20 years. Currently, Cohen is in production on a global film about love and forgiveness that has taken him around the world to highlight stories in Uganda, India, Haiti, Spain and Italy.

PRISON TERMINAL: THE LAST DAYS OF PRIVATE JACK HALL: A moving cinema verité documentary that breaks through the walls of one of Americas 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.

The film draws from footage shot over a six-month period behind the walls of the Iowa State Penitentiary and provides a fascinating and often poignant account of how the hospice experience can profoundly touch even the forsaken lives of the incarcerated.

Director Edgar Barens received his Bachelors degree and Masters of Fine Arts in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University. His body of work includes documentary films, experimental shorts, music videos and public service announcements, which have been screened at numerous film festivals, conferences, broadcast nationally and internationally, as well as distributed educationally. Barens’ work has received funding from the Illinois Arts Council, the Open Society Institute’s Project on Death in America and the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture, the Independent Feature Project, the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the International Documentary Association, with additional support from Working Films and the Blue Mountain Center.