''In Prison My Whole Life'' is a 2007

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

about American journalist and prisoner

Mumia Abu-Jamal Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death ...

, directed by

Marc Evans Marc Evans (born 1963) is a Welsh director of film and television, whose credits include the films '' House of America'', '' Resurrection Man'' and '' My Little Eye''. Biography Evans was born in 1963 in Cardiff, Wales. He studied for a histor ...

, and written by Evans and William Francome. Others involved with the project were Robert R. Bryan,

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...

, Anthony Arnove,

Dead Prez Dead Prez, often stylized as dead prez, is an American hip hop duo composed of stic.man and M-1, formed in 1996 in New York City. They are known for their confrontational style, combined with lyrics focused on both militant social justice, self ...

Howard Zinn Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a politica ...

Mos Def Yasiin Bey (; born Dante Terrell Smith, December 11, 1973), previously and more commonly known by his stage name Mos Def (), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor. His hip hop career began in 1994, alongside his siblings in the s ...

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

Robert Meeropol Robert Meeropol (born May 14, 1947 as Robert Rosenberg) is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Meeropol was born in New York City. His father Julius was an electrical engineer and a member of the Communist Party. His mother Ethel (né ...

Russell Simmons Russell Wendell Simmons (born October 4, 1957) is an American entrepreneur, writer and record executive. He co-founded the hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings, and created the clothing fashion lines Phat Farm, Argyleculture, and Tantris. Simmons ...

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and

Steve Earle Stephen Fain Earle (; born January 17, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, author, and actor. Earle began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982. Initially working in the country music ...

. The film's executive producer is

Colin Firth Colin Andrew Firth (born 10 September 1960) is an English actor and producer. He was identified in the mid-1980s with the " Brit Pack" of rising young British actors, undertaking a challenging series of roles, including leading roles in '' A M ...

. The film explores the life of imprisoned journalist and political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, and his years on death row. The title refers to Abu-Jamal having been arrested and jailed in December 1981, on the day William Francome was born. He has been in prison ever since his conviction in 1982. His

death sentence Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

for killing a police officer was overturned in 2001 due to constitutional problems with the penalty phase of his original 1982 sentencing hearing. The film investigates United States civil rights history and its justice system through Jamal's court case. The film is available on DVD and VO

Awards

The film was nominated in 2008 for 'World Cinema - Documentary' with the award of 'Grand Jury Prize' at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

. The film premiered in France in October 2008 and was subsequently released by the festival in more than 20 towns. At the 2009 International Festival of Cinema on Human Rights in Paris, ''In Prison My Whole Life'' won the Student Award and the Planet Award. The film was released nationwide in France on 23 November 2011.

Reception

The film has a 38% "Rotten" rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

. In a 2/5 star review,

Time Out Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to: Time * Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team * Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken * Timeout (computing), an engine ...

critic Tom Huddleston said of the film, "Sadly, ''My Little Eye'' director Marc Evans’s doc is only tangentially about Jamal – instead, he chooses to focus on William Francome. ..Francome is an uninteresting central figure, unconnected to the case or the history of civil rights, to which the pair present a sort of Idiot’s Guide midway through. But Evans keeps him front and centre throughout ..making ‘In Prison My Whole Life’ just another self-absorbed agit-prop documentary." Jay Weissberg of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' called it an "unfocused, oddly naive" film, and said that the editing "is overly dependent on computer tricks, and use of verbal loops to reinforce lines treats the audience like idiots." By contrast, ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

'' said the film was "exciting", the editing being a "deliberated melting-pot", resulting in an overall "captivating portrait of Mumia Abu-Jamal"." 'Toute ma vie en prison dans les couloirs de la mort aux etats unis' " (In Prison My Whole Life)
''

'', 22 Nov 2011

References

External links

* * {{Marc Evans 2007 films 2007 documentary films Documentary films about American politics Documentary films about capital punishment in the United States Anti-modernist films British independent films Documentary films about law in the United States Films directed by Marc Evans Documentary films about African Americans Films about activists 2007 independent films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films 2000s British films

Awards

Reception

See also

References

External links