Sneak Peek: ‘College Behind Bars’ To Screen at Bay Street

In this era of mass incarceration, America is the world’s largest jailer, with more than two million men and women behind bars. Nearly 50 percent of the 630,000 released annually end up back in prison within five years — trapped in a cycle of imprisonment, release and re-incarceration.

But one program, Bard Prison Initiative, has proven this statistic wrong. In the nearly 20 years since BPI began, more than 500 alumni have been released, and fewer than 4% have gone back. The program currently enrolls 300 men and women in six prisons, and costs $6,000 per student per year, most of it privately funded.

This caught the attention of Peabody-Award winning filmmaker Lynn Novick, who will make her solo directorial debut with “College Behind Bars,” a two-part, four-hour series that will air on PBS on November 25 and 26, nearly three months after a preview screening on Friday, August 23, at 4:30 p.m. at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“This film challenges conventional wisdom about education and incarceration, and raises questions we urgently need to address,” Ms. Novick said. “What ultimately is prison for? Who in America has access to educational opportunity? Who among us is capable of academic excellence? How can we break the cycle of recidivism? How can we have justice without redemption?”

Produced by longtime collaborator Sarah Botstein alongside Novick, the series reveals the transformative power of higher education through the experiences of incarcerated men and women. Distilled from nearly 400 hours of cinéma-vérité footage, it explores the lives of a dozen incarcerated men and women as they struggle to earn BPI degrees from one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in the country.

Working with cinematographers Buddy Squires, ASC, and Nadia Hallgren, Novick and Botstein received unprecedented access to film for four years inside maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, following the lives, experiences and words of incarcerated men, women and their families.

“The film, edited by Tricia Reidy, ACE, takes viewers on a stark and emotionally intense journey into one of the most pressing issues of our time — our failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for the millions of Americans living behind bars,” a press release said.

To be clear, this is not a story about non-violent drug offenders, false convictions or exoneration, unlike many recent documentary films about the criminal justice system. All of the BPI students featured in the film are serving time for serious, often violent, offenses. In deeply personal interviews, they describe their childhoods and family backgrounds, reveal why they are incarcerated and express remorse, as well as hope for redemption and their worries about what life will bring after release from prison.

A talkback with Novick and BPI alums Dyjuan Tatro and Sebastian Yoon will follow. Admission is a $20 suggested donation. For more information, call 631-725-9500 or visit baystreet.org.