Documentary: Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal (2012)
First Run Features. Buy video
The new documentary, “Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal,” was created by writer, producer, and director Steve Vittoria, as well as Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio, who has interviewed Abu-Jamal many times over the years.
Before he was convicted of murdering a policeman in 1981 and sentenced to die, Mumia Abu-Jamal was a gifted journalist and brilliant writer. Now after more than 30 years in prison, Mumia is not only still alive but continuing to report, provoke, and inspire. Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary is an inspiring portrait of a man whom many consider America’s most famous political prisoner – a man whose existence tests our beliefs about freedom of expression.
Through prison interviews, archival footage, and dramatic readings, and aided by a potent chorus of voices including Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Ruby Dee, writer Tariq Ali, author Michelle Alexander, and others, this riveting film explores Mumia’s life before, during and after Death Row – revealing, in the words of Angela Davis, “the most eloquent and most powerful opponent of the death penalty in the world…the 21st Century Frederick Douglass.”
Justice On Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (2010)
Created by Kouross Esmaeli as well as by Johanna Fernandez (A lawyer for Mumia Abu-Jamal). Big Noise Films Productions.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most recognized death row inmate in the world today. In 1982, he was tried and convicted for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Since then, the Abu-Jamal trial proceedings have come under scrutiny and today his case is one of the most contested legal cases in modern American history. A former Black Panther and now renowned author, his books and writings in venues as diverse as the Yale Law Review, Forbes, The Nation, and street-papers for the homeless, have led many to hail him the voice of the voiceless. Justice on Trial navigates the tempest of the Abu-Jamal trial by reviewing the known facts of the case. It demonstrates that the major violations in the Abu-Jamal case – judicial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, racial discrimination in jury selection, police corruption, and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction– are not special to this case. Instead, they are commonly practiced within the criminal justice system and account for the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and Latinos in the United States.