1) Block shows film raising criminal rights concerns
2) Freedom Riders on film
*************************************************************************************** Block shows film raising criminal rights concerns [back to top] After hosting several events for the Chicago International Documentary Film Festival, Block Cinema screened the last four films on Friday night. Narrated by musician Ani DiFranco, "Fighting for Life in the Death-Belt," was one of those films. The documentary follows legendary, anti-death penalty lawyer Stephen Bright as he tries to save Wallace Fugate, a convicted murder. Bright and his staff from the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta were followed by a crew of filmmakers for about six weeks in the summer of 2002. Fugate admitted he had shot his wife during a domestic dispute, but claimed it was an accident. The film documents how Bright, along with Center lawyer Sanjay Chhablani, an assistant law professor at the College of Law at Syracuse University, tried to save Fugate -- who received a day-and-half trial and 27-minute sentencing hearing. Co-director Adam Elend, 28, said the film is different from others because it documents the story of someone who is factually guilty, but not given a fair trial. "A lot of people have spent a lot of time on the greater moral issue of the death penalty," Elend said. "But we wanted to focus on the injustices of the process." The film also was screened on Saturday in in Chicago. Bright, Former Gov. George Ryan, administrators from NU's School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions, and some of Illinois' exonerated attended. Despite Illinois' active death penalty reform movement, most activists still believe the capital punishment system is flawed. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1979, 18 of the 289 people sentenced to death were exonerated. A moratorium on the death penalty established in 2000 remains in effect. The Center on Wrongful Convictions is nationally recognized, as is the Southern Center for Human Rights. NU's Center has been involved with exonerating 30 individuals, including 11 from death row. In January the Center on Wrongful Convictions represented three of the four Chicago men pardoned by Gov. Rod Blagojevich after were exonerated with the help of Northwestern law professors and DNA testing. The co-directors of the film, Adam Elend and Jeff Marks, discussed their movie and answered questions after the documentary to a crowd of 25 where Marks, 33, said that in the Southern states, death penalty cases are routine. "There are definitely those states who love (the death-penalty) and want to keep it," Marks said. Weinberg junior Ellen Stolar said she came to the viewing because she is interested in the justice system and documentaries. The fusion of the two provided her an opportunity to learn more, Stolar said. "I came to see how selfless the people who work in such agencies are," Stolar said. The documentary was introduced by Dan Fields, Communications junior, who is a projectionist coordinator at Block Cinema. "It's part of showing things you couldn't see normally," he said. *** Reach Ashima Singal at a-singal-1@northwestern.edu |
*************************************************************************************** Freedom Riders on film [back to top] Here are some of the things that keep me up at night: * We have a Congress that sees fit to intercede in a family tragedy to burnish its Christian Right credentials. * We have an Army and intelligence service engaged in brutal practices against detainees in contravention of law and basic human decency. * We have a president who is spending our national treasure like it's Monopoly money - putting us in hock for generations - to fund an unnecessary war and a profligate regime of tax cuts. But just when you think there is nothing to do but watch with sad eyes as this nation sinks from greatness, you meet two guys like Adam Elend and Jeff Marks. Elend and Marks - founders of Tampa-based EM Productions - are They have just completed their first full-length documentary, Fighting for Life in the Death-Belt, a paean to legendary death penalty lawyer Stephen Bright, whose Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights is ground The documentary follows Bright and his colleagues as they try to stave off lethal injection for two defendants: Carzell Moore, who takes a state offer of life without parole - a victory for the center; and Wallace Fugate, a man who killed his ex-wife during a domestic dispute. While Fugate admits to shooting his ex-wife, he said the gun went off accidentally. There was, according to Bright, available evidence that the gun model used had a propensity for accidental firing, but that was never brought out by his court-appointed lawyers. We watch as Fugate's fate is sealed by a system uninterested in the slipshod lawyering he received at trial. Despite the Herculean, round-the-clock efforts of Bright and his team, Fugate is put to death. The film, which is making the festival circuit, including a showing at the Florida Film Festival in Orlando on April 10, starkly illustrates the arbitrariness of the ultimate penalty and the tension-filled, hurly-burly world of attorneys who do postconviction capital appeals. But Elend and Marks would just be another set of talented filmmakers if it wasn't for their special zeal for challenging wrongs and standing up for America's founding values. Like modern-day Freedom Riders, they are even willing to put their liberty on the line in the name of challenging abuses of power. Elend and Marks were arrested in 2002 outside a "Jeb Bush for Governor" rally in the University of South Florida Sun Dome at which President Bush was also in attendance. They had come to protest the distant cages - known The video they made of the arrest is pure political theater. Here is the awesome power of the state amassed to rid the USF campus of a dire threat: messages critical of the president. If you didn't know better, you'd think the scene was something out of Castro's Cuba. As Elend taped, Marks, along with fellow protester Joe Redner, held signs reading "War is good for business . . . invest your sons!!!" and "Why do you let these crooks fool you?" They were holding the signs - sans poles - across a frontage road from the arena entrance where a long line of people had a clear view. (The men are seen rather stoically absorbing insults lobbed from the crowd.) That's when police approached. (To the cheers of the waiting Bush supporters, who obviously relished the idea of someone getting arrested for disagreeing with them.) Knowing this confrontation was inevitable, the men had brought copies of relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions to prove they had a right to dissent against the government in close proximity to their targeted audience. But no one in uniform was interested. Instead, the men were directed to the First Amendment zone hundreds of yards away - so far that it wasn't visible. They were arrested after they refused to comply. As the scene unfolds, the video captures Bush supporters streaming into the arena, some carrying signs reading "Jeb!". No one in authority has any problem with those. The charges of trespassing against Elend and Marks were eventually dismissed by a judge. The point, after all, wasn't to put them in jail; it was to shut them up while the president was around. Mission accomplished. The young men are now suing. I hope they win a damage award large enough to fund what should be their next film project: Fighting for Free Speech in the Bush-Belt. Just another story of justice subverted. *** Reach Robyn Blumner at blumner@sptimes.com |
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