{"id":519646,"date":"2026-01-16T05:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T05:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/519646\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T05:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T05:37:12","slug":"edward-norton-and-eden-wurmfeld-on-oscar-shortlisted-classroom-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/519646\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Norton And Eden Wurmfeld On Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Classroom 4’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tProfessor Reiko Hillyer has taught at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR for over 20 years, but it\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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 \u2014 15 from \u201cinside\u201d (that is to say, inmates) and 15 undergraduate students from \u201coutside\u201d (in other words, free) in a semester-long exploration of the history of crime and punishment in the United States.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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<\/a>, who first met Hillyer when they were 7th graders in New York City.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been hearing about this program since [Reiko] started participating in it [in 2012],\u201d Wurmfeld tells Deadline. \u201cIt\u2019s called the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. And it\u2019s actually an international program, and teachers of any discipline can take the training and offer classes\u2026 I think for me, the film is as much about the encounter between these two groups, these two unlikely groups \u2014 and they\u2019re learning from each other and with each other \u2014 as it is a testament to the power of incredible teaching and the gift of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs 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 \u201cfill in the blank\u201d to various sentences, including \u201cYou might be surprised to learn that I ___,\u201d and \u201cThe quality I value most in a friend is ___.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Joey,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJoey, at right, with a student from \u201coutside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPBS\/POV Shorts\/Eden Wurmfeld Films<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 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 \u2013 as a form of self-protection).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI 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,\u201d Wurmfeld says, \u201cand how they grew to be a unified group of students studying history and learning from each other and with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Prof.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tProf. Reiko Hillyer teaches in \u2018Classroom 4.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPBS\/POV Shorts\/Eden Wurmfeld Films<\/p>\n

\n\tEach class \u2013 held on successive Fridays for 15 weeks \u2013 explores topics that for outsiders might be comfortably academic, but that speak directly to the concerns and experiences of \u201cinsiders\u201d \u2013 topics like mercy, and the \u201cmyths and realities of prison life.\u201d As the film progresses and the discussions deepen, we learn more about the men and what got them incarcerated \u2013 their history of abuse as children, for instance, or of drug addiction in adulthood. The seeds of empathy germinate. The men in prison blues come to appear as individuals, as human beings, not as monsters to be feared.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Nick<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNick (holding pen) with fellow students in \u2018Classroom 4.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPBS\/POV Shorts\/Eden Wurmfeld Films<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe voices of the men, to me, were so powerful and I really wanted to have as much real estate as possible for their voices,\u201d Wurmfeld notes. \u201cYou go on this transformative ride. I know that even if the film never reaches \u2018outside the choir,\u2019 if you will, of people who tend to watch documentaries \u2014 and that is a self-selecting group, and I\u2019m definitely in that choir \u2014 that this shifted my own preconceived notions that maybe I didn\u2019t even know I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong those touched by the documentary is multiple Oscar nominee Edward Norton<\/a>, who serves as an executive producer of Classroom 4.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe thing that kind of blew me away about the film was the degree to which it refuses to let you dehumanize anyone,\u201d Norton tells Deadline. \u201cIt insists that you see the complex humanity and even the shared empathy between people across these structural divides that we\u2019ve created. And to me, ultimately, it\u2019s so hopeful. It reminds you that we shouldn\u2019t give up on the hope of finding commonality between people\u2026 I haven\u2019t watched it with anybody who wasn\u2019t pretty much moved to tears by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Students<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tStudents bond in \u2018Classroom 4.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPBS\/POV Shorts\/Eden Wurmfeld Films<\/p>\n

\n\tNorton continues, \u201cIt\u2019s a weird phrase, but to me, it made me almost grieve. I think part of why it\u2019s emotional is because you\u2019re grieving for all this lost potential in people and you grieve for the whole society and the way that we\u2019re missing the opportunity in so many ways to connect with each other. I think maybe the thing I think is the most valuable about [the film] is that it has an actual catalytic effect. When you watch it, I think you end up saying to yourself, \u2018What opportunities am I missing to be empathetic?\u2019 Here\u2019s this professor, she\u2019s taken her work in American history and she\u2019s turned it into an opportunity to liberate people and open them up and make them think deeper, feel deeper. And it does make you look at yourself in the mirror and say, \u2018Am I looking at people reductively and shutting them out? How can I be opening myself up and seeing people?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a voiceover interview in the film, Prof. Hillyer acknowledges that she\u2019s generally brought to tears at least once per class. Her capacity to see potential in people typically dismissed by society may put the professor at odds with the zeitgeist \u2013 an era in American life where cruelty seems to have been privileged.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Eden Wurmfeld<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSonia Recchia\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re living in a time where often compassion is seen as a weakness,\u201d Wurmfeld observes. \u201cAnd one of the things that I really value about what the film became is that it underscores that empathy can be resistance. And I just believe in that so deeply, and it\u2019s the way I want to carry myself in the world and the way I want to engage. And it does make living in these times maybe all that much harder, but I\u2019m certainly not giving up on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tClassroom 4 can be watched for free on the PBS website<\/a>. Norton praises the documentary for its economy in achieving one of the central missions of cinema \u2013 in a total running time under 40 minutes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the greatest aspiration in film is always to create a feeling of empathy and shared humanity between an audience and each other,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like to bind people together or make people feel their common humanity in one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Professor Reiko Hillyer has taught at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR for over 20 years, but…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":519647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[142411,231423,231424,157036,171,53,23967,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-519646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-awardsdoc","tag-classroom-4","tag-eden-wurmfeld","tag-edward-norton","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-pbs","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115903165256085858","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}