Capital Punishment Documentary and Discussion Friday

Dear Readers, Writers, Teachers, Students and All Members of the General Public,

 

We invite you to attend the following free film event, which will be followed by an audience discussion led by UAlbany professors Vivien Ng, Chair of the Women’s Studies Department, and James Acker, Distinguished Teaching Professor of the School of Criminal Justice:

THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN
October 19 (Friday)
Film Screening — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
Directed by Liz Garbus
(United States, 2007, 94 minutes, color)

A spare and unsentimental documentary about the first African American woman to be put to death in modern times, EXECUTION follows the clemency appeal of mentally-impaired death row inmate Wanda Jean Allen. NY Times reviewer Julie Salamon said the film “offers an unusual opportunity to observe the inequities in the death penalty, not just the inherent immorality but also the haphazard administration of it.... In the end, Execution achieves a torturous, race-against-time desperation. Against a well-captured background of extended-family grief, the film inflates with optimism and then helplessly watches the state squeeze the air out. As Allen’s execution date closes in, the documentary gives an especially poignant portrait of her friendship with the never flagging legal investigator David Presson. For all his chin-up attitude, he slowly comes apart, sweating, sighing, laughing uncontrollably at Allen’s good-natured faith that all will end well….” The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

 

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