‘Why I filmed a man take his final breath'
The old man lies in the hospital bed, drawing his last, rattling breath as he fades away from life. The film camera, positioned just next to him, keeps rolling. We see the nurses move him to another room before they gently clean his body. "Nobody wants to die but it's a natural thing, we are biologically determined to die," says documentary maker Steven Eastwood.His film, Island, lays bare the dying process by filming four people with terminal illnesses. "Death is seen as a shameful thing - we think we're a progressive society, but we repress and deny death," Steven says. "We're no better than the Victorians."He was a quiet onlooker during the last year of his subjects'...