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| Life and death |
| By Sarah Etter, News Reporter |
| Published: 01/08/2007 |
It is not often that an independent filmmaker is granted complete access to a corrections facility, especially one that intends to record the death of an inmate.
But for Edgar Barens, that's exactly how his film, Prison Terminal: Life and Death in a Prison Hospice came about. For one year Barens had unparalleled access to the Iowa State Penitentiary where he followed inmate and hospice patient Jack Hall, an 83-year old war veteran suffering from chronic pulmonary disease. Hall, it appears, was quite the character. “Jack seemed to have nine lives,” Barens recalls. “He would get very sick and spend two weeks in the hospital and come back to the hospice spryer than ever. Jack smoked pretty much until the last 12 years of his life. If he could have melted a hole in that mask to smoke, he would have.” IADOC's hospice program, like many other states', offered Hall an inmate companion to keep him company as he entered the final stages of his disease, along with a comfortable room to pass away in. “For a lot of the men in these programs, it offers a way of dying that they never thought they would have in prison,” explains Barens. “They can have someone holding their hand and helping them. Without these programs, they would die alone or in a cell. This is just a way for them to die with dignity and comfort.” For ISP offenders, this means being able to watch television in a comfy bed. Although this may seem like a small solace, it is the ultimate luxury for those who have been incarcerated for decades. “You wouldn't believe how happy just sitting in bed with a remote control can make some of these guys,” the Southern Illinois University MFA graduate adds. The filmmaker, who developed close relationships with patients, medical volunteers and inmates, hopes that by examining offenders in these programs at length, the viewing public might reevaluate the incarcerated. “There are a lot of things I want this film to show, or at least bring up. I want to humanize this,” he says. “You get to know Jack as a person, all of his faults, all of his hopes and regrets. When he does die, by the end of the film, people will feel compassion for someone that at the beginning they didn't care about. At the beginning, he was just a throw-away person, a murderer.” Prison Terminal is currently in post-production as Barens seeks more funding to finalize the work. But he is focused on the social discussion he hopes the film initiates. “So far, I'm doing this with my own funds. But I want to raise awareness of the fact that the elderly prison population is going to be a problem. They are already building nursing homes for elderly prisoners,” he says. “The elderly population in prisons is just going to skyrocket in the next 20 years. Twenty percent of the inmate population will be over fifty years old and they age even faster in prison.” Barens initially found himself filming behind bars at Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary where he filmed Angola Prison Hospice: Opening the Door. He describes that film as a “nuts-and-bolts” effort that basically profiles a hospice program and encourages corrections departments to establish their own. The film was funded by a video distribution service that sent copies to many DOCs and soon Barens' name was well-known in facilities across the country. Most of the facilities established hospice programs after seeing his film. The film's focus on hospice might seem morbid to some, but for Barens it is a form of activism. He hopes to see every corrections facility establish a program someday. “These programs can be offered at barely any cost to the facility, and it's just the humane thing to do,” he says. “Most of the COs and inmates I've spoken to believe in this program because it is the right thing to do, to give someone dignity and comfort before they die.” Related resources: Options for the elderly |
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