|
Director: Liz Garbus
Cast: Wanda Jean Allen
Country: U.S.
Year: 2001
Running Time: 88 min
Format: Beta SP
 As
this compelling film opens, the facts are these: Wanda Jean
Allen was convicted 11 years ago of murder in Oklahoma and
is waiting out the final stages of the judicial process. She
is hoping for a stay of execution. Wanda Jean admits to killing
her girlfriend in front of a police station, and has already
served time on a previous conviction. The mitigating circumstances
are that she has a low IQ, the result of brain damage.
The film takes us into a big, explosive political issue,
capital punishment, by looking through a microscope. By exploring
the emotions that swirl around justice, race, sexuality, revenge,
as they relate to this one case, filmmaker Liz Garbus gives
the audience a chance to contemplate capital punishment in
a specific, human way. The questions about capital punishment
- Does it deliver justice? Does it deliver closure? Can it
deter crime? - hang over this story with no easy answer. The
filmmakers have cast an unyielding eye on the subject, and
they get us extraordinarily close to the key participants
and the issues.
First seen at Sundance 2002, this film is an HBO production.
--Jed Dietz
Presented By: Liz Garbus
|
|
The first film Liz Garbus directed, The Farm: Angola,
USA, won two Emmy Awards, the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance
1998, and an Academy Award nomination. She is on the Jury
this year at Toronto's Hot Docs Festival, and her film Juvies
was screened at the Maryland Film Festival 2000. In 1998,
Liz established Moxie/Firecracker Films with Rory Kennedy,
whose film American Hollow was screened at the Maryland
Film Festival 1999.
|
