Director Eden Wurmfeld And E.P. Edward Norton On Why Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Classroom 4’ Brings People To Tears

Professor Reiko Hillyer has taught at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR for over 20 years, but it’s a course she conducts away from campus that has put her at the center of an award-winning documentary, the Oscar-shortlisted short film Classroom 4 . Joey, at right, with a student from “outside.”PBS/POV Shorts/Eden Wurmfeld Films The classroom of the title is located within the walls of Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland. There, Prof. Hillyer leads a group of 30 students - 15 from “inside” (that is to say, inmates) and 15 undergraduate students from “outside” (in other words, free) in a semester-long exploration of the history of crime and punishment in the United States. The film, winner of the Jury Award for Best Documentary at the Aspen Film Shortsfest and Best Documentary at LA Shorts International Film Festival, is directed by Eden Wurmfeld , who first met Hillyer when they were 7 th graders in New York City. Watch on Deadline “I’ve been hearing about this program since [Reiko] started participating in it [in 2012],” Wurmfeld tells Deadline. “It’s called the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. And it’s actually an international program, and teachers of any discipline can take the training and offer classes... I think for me, the film is as much about the encounter between these two groups, these two unlikely groups - and they’re learning from each other and with each other - as it is a testament to the power of incredible teaching and the gift of that.” As the first class begins, students take seats in plastic chairs arrayed in concentric circles (the undergrads on the inside circle, facing students from the correctional facility). Prof. Hillyer opens with ice breakers, asking students to “fill in the blank” to various sentences, including “You might be surprised to learn that I ___,” and “The quality I value most in a friend is ___.” In a sense, this serves as an ice breaker for the audience as well, who may, at first glance, find the inmates a bit intimidating (one prisoner, Joey, reveals that he deliberately got tattoos once behind bars to look tougher - as a form of self-protection). “I really wanted to be able to show the relationship between the two groups of students and how separate and how anxious, fearful everyone was at first,” Wurmfeld says, “and how they grew to be a unified group of students studying history and learning from each other and with each other.” Each class - held on successive Fridays for 15 weeks - explores topics that for outsiders might be comfortably academic, but that speak directly to the concerns and experiences of “insiders” - topics like mercy, and the “myths and realities of prison life.” As the film progresses and the discussions deepen, we learn more about the men and what got them incarcerated - their history of abuse as children, for instance, or of drug addiction in adulthood. The seeds of empathy germinate. The men in prison blues...

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