Review: In Prison my Whole Life

Staff Writer: Ann Stieglitz

4 out of 5 shovels
I saw the film, In Prison My Whole Life (2007/8), produced by Livia Giuggioli-Firth and Colin Firth (executive producer), for the second time (the first was at the Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, where it was introduced by Amnesty International) on the 29 September at one of the oldest cinemas in Britain, the Duke of York's in Brighton. It is directed by Marc Evans who also directed Colin Firth in Master of the Moor, Trauma, and helped Livia with her doctoral dissertation, a film about Giuseppe Tornatore. The film has the stamp of approval of Amnesty International, the first time they have given it to any film. I found it even more powerful on this second viewing, leaving me feeling very shaken.

In Brighton, it was introduced by Caroline Lucas, the Euro Green Party Member of Parliament. She recapped the story briefly and praised the Firths' bravery in producing the film. This tells the troubled story of a Black Panther journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, imprisoned for 25 years on death row convicted of the murder of a policeman, Daniel Faulkner on evidence not proven, and with enough reasonable doubt to have prompted an appeal (now denied). The story is traced by William Francombe, who was born the day Mumia was convicted in Philadelphia, supposed bastion of the American Constitution, an irony not lost on the film makers. Will himself says:

"I was born in London on December 9th 1981. Over 3000 miles away Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther and radical journalist, was arrested for the murder of a police officer in Philadelphia. He claimed he was innocent but was sentenced to death and has been awaiting execution ever since. Over the years, he has attracted massive international support from organisations like Amnesty International and world leaders like Nelson Mandela amongst others. I'm now 24 years old and in that time Mumia has become the most famous and controversial death row inmate in America".

Some critics feel this to be an artificial device, but as Colin Firth pointed out in the Q&A, it was one way to reach a younger generation, and with the film being based on myspacefilm.com (see links below), would hopefully have a wider impact and reach across the generations. In fact, Colin pointed out that many new threads had been opened this way.

The film is not a ‘redemptive’ film where the baddies are punished and the goodies go free. There is a detailed exposition of the trial evidence, where the prosecutor had apparently concocted a convincing tale to the jury of 8 white and 4 (then 3) African Americans. But it is a complicated film, which contextualises the trial in its racist society – the judge, for instance, was overheard by a stenographer to say, “I’m going to make sure this n……..fries in hell”. The film is an indictment of the death penalty in America, and takes the opportunity to contextualise African-American history, looking at the racist history behind so much turmoil, from slavery through to the civil rights' movements of the 1960s, to Abu Grail and the cowardly behaviour toward the residents of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

I was struck by the wide-ranging history of racism in the US presented in the film, and especially the re-telling of a repressed and shameful episode concerning the murder of a group of people called the Move. They were an organization formed in Philadelphia in 1972 by John Africa and Donald Glassey, and were a group of people typical of the legacy of the 1960s. They wanted to 'get back to nature' and rejected technology - in other words, they were 'outsiders', and like all outsiders aroused suspicion, enmity, hate and eventually, violence from the community in Philadelphia. There was a 'stand-off' in 1978 with the Philadelphia Police Department, and members were sentenced for third degree murder. But in 1985, tension escalated dramatically, when the Philadelphia police were unable to serve arrest warrants and they dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto the rooftop of their house. The house burst into flames and six adults and five children burnt to death. This was certainly shocking to those of us who knew nothing about it - one felt the audience visibly start. The filmmakers have found dramatic archive footage, which shows the bombing and the charred bodies - yet to this day, this event is in the Guinness Book of Records as a 'mass suicide'.

What has this to do with Mumia, you might well ask. Well, that is the point of the film - not only to focus on one man's incarceration, and the murder of the policeman, Daniel Faulkner, but to contextualise African-American history. It is no co-incidence that the majority of prisoners on Death Row are black - as the film shows it is part and parcel of being poor and under represented in the Courts.

The film includes interviews with people like Naom Chomsky, Alice Walker, Mos Def, Snoop Dog and Angela Davis, and, in fact, makes a point of comparing Angela's case to that of Mumia. Where Angela Davis was able to harness the support of so many people, Mumia cannot. There is even a so-called 'Mumia law' in Pennsylvania. Originally, prisoners on Death Row were allowed to be filmed, but the authorities banned this - along with everyone else on Death Row. The film makers had to resort to other means to represent him, although his radio broadcasts are allowed, and Mumia's voice is powerful throughout the film.

It is the use of new technology that impressed me most, making this an unusual 'documentary', and perhaps paving the way for other political films. Different techniques were used to dramatise interviews, photographs and historical material. The film opens with a black screen and a digital clock ticking the seconds away, like the series, '24', starring Kiefer Sutherland, but here the ticks signify reality - a man's life ticks away; and with a sudden rush, has ticked away 25 years of life on Death Row. This device has, of course, a long history, but to see it represent reality rather than fiction is very moving and makes you aware that the duration of the film is another 93 minutes of a man's life. Other filmic devices remind us of early modernism in art, for instance, the collage-like effects, remind us of Picasso and Braque's 'synthetic' period, when text was introduced into their work; or perhaps even more powerfully, remind us of the anti-Hitler photomontages by John Heartfield and the agit-prop films of the Russian Revolution. The new technology could, of course, speed things up, so when black and white photographs of people are cut up (John Heartfield spoke of his scissors as the weapons of revolution), they first turn into colour and then into the 'real' people telling their stories. This is used on archive film as well as with interviews of people speaking in the present. Throughout, we hear Mumia's inspirational broadcasts, while only seeing photographs of him - "the voice for the voiceless".

I have attended two Question and Answer sessions, one in May, at the Curzon cinema in Mayfair, the other in Brighton this September. I felt that the Question and Answer session at the Curzon was amazing. Will and the representative from Amnesty answered questions with honesty and integrity and Livia and Colin answered all sorts of questions. I was most impressed by Colin Firth – the master of silence and unspoken feelings in his films (and who is even more GORGEOUS in real life!), who spoke passionately and with conviction about the case. He is extremely articulate and intelligent, and showed how strongly he felt about the abolition of the death penalty in the US. At this Q&A, feelings were running high, the air was tense and Colin Firth was totally absorbed in the issue of the Death Penalty, and speaking passionately against it. It was interesting that Europe is almost free of the Death Penalty - only one country (Belarus) still retains it - and so it is not an issue for us on this side of the pond. But Colin Firth has lived in the US, Will's mother has always been engaged politically and it is her support for Will, which comes over as enlightened and radical.

The Q&A at Brighton was a more relaxed affair, with only a few questions and half the time allocated. But interesting questions arose, such as why did they not choose an African American director? But both Colin and Livia felt that this question did not lead anywhere - what was important was to show how authority dealt, deals, with dissent, and how the law was implemented. Paul Robeson spoke in the film and of course here we see how archetypes can present problems, where there might be a knee jerk reaction to a black man supposedly committing a crime. Colin Firth spoke about living in America during the Watergate crisis, and in response to a provocative question about everyone hating Americans, he could only say how much he admired the whole process - imagine a country putting its own leader on trial! Would that happen in many countries we know of. His - and Livia's - admiration of the US is strong and unbounded - but precisely because of 'freedom of speech' enshrined in the Constitution.

As a friend who is a lawyer said to me:

"The issue is the Death Penalty. That is what the film represents. It does not matter who is right or who is wrong. Let's assume that Mumia Abu Jamal killed the policeman. It is not the crime, but the punishment that matters. The philosophy of punishment has a long history, in law and in literature (think of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment). It is not so simple to condemn someone to the extreme penalty of death. It is not a civilized decision to kill someone who has already killed someone else. The initial intention of the legislator is to educate the criminal about the consequences of his action, by the penalty.

If you just kill him, what is the benefit of Law? What is the result of the Civilization? Are we living in the jungle? Should it really be an eye of an eye and a tooth of a tooth? Then why do we make laws? And what if the Court, the Judge, makes a wrong decision? How do we make it up to a man who is dead? You see the existence of the Death Penalty in a civilized country is a total provocation, that must be abolished, and this is why this film has a such a powerful meaning and effect."

My purpose here, therefore, has been only to report on the film and give you my own impressions. I do not take a partial stance, because I certainly do not know anything about the case. I find, however, that this is an effective and powerful film and needs much more exposure. It is not 'propaganda' as such, more 'agit prop', in a revolutionary sense, intended to stimulate debate about the Death Penalty in the US. The film is about the legitimate nature of dissent in a democratic society - and we have seen what happens to dissent in societies like Iran - and the plea to allow difference and differences. It is a shame that no distributor could be found in the US. Is this suppression of dissent through other means? Why won't any distributor touch the film? Are we all too afraid now?

A Nana Films Presentation in Association with Fandango, The Maverick Lloyd Foundation, The Wales Creative IP Fund and Ivo Coulson, Directed by Marc Evans, Produced by Livia Giuggioli Firth Nick Goodwin Self, Co-produced by John Battsek and Domenico Procacci, Executive Producers Arthur Berndt Ivo Coulson Colin Firth Linda James, Written by Marc Evans and William Francome, Based on an Idea by William Francome and Katie Green

Sources:

The website is http://www.inprisonmywholelife.com/ where you can buy the dvd, and also look at

www.myspace.com/inprisonmywholelife

and http://www.adifferentmovie.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE

Daniel Faulkner website,
http://www.danielfaulkner.com/

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/myths.html

Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPXAXP0Zl-s&feature=related

John Heartfield, father of photomontage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JalYez3UegM