In Prison My Whole Life (2007)

Director:

Marc Evans

Writers:

Marc Evans (writer)
William Francome (writer)

Release Date:

23 October 2008 (UK)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

A look at the life of imprisoned political activist and former Black Panther member, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who's death sentence for killing a police officer was overturned in 2001 due to errors made during his original 1982 sentencing hearing. |

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Mumia Abu-Jamal	...	Himself
Boots	...	Himself
Noam Chomsky	...	Himself
Mos Def	...	Himself
Snoop Dogg	...	Himself
Steve Earle	...	Himself
William Francome	...	Himself
Russell Simmons	...	Himself
Alice Walker	...	Herself
Howard Zinn	...	Himself

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

UK:15

Company:

Fandango

Soundtrack:

What Up Man

Weary elephant, small room

It's interesting this is mostly a British-funded film (although it's hard to pin down nationality of anything as amorphous as movies, anymore). Some time ago, the Mumia case began to droop in the United States - unable to generate passion among even the most blinkered true Lefty believers. In 1981, Mumia was found sitting on a Philadelphia sidewalk, badly wounded by bullets from a policeman's gun, with his own fired gun beside him; a few feet away was the dead policeman, full of bullets from Mumia's said gun. That's pretty much the case. Since then, we've been told up is down, night is day, and Mumia is innocent.

This movie avoids like the plague those actual, damning details of the case, and launches into a long, blobby, tiresome recounting of racism in America. We get input from such notable historians as Snoop Dog. Europeans must go ga-ga over this stuff; on this side of the pond, we can recite it by rote. There's a limit to even the most well-mapped guilt trips - not that this is on that list, and it's a wonder movies like this get funded these days. It probably had an audience in the... 5s.