The Story of Mumia Abu Jamal’s Case

How well do you know the story of Mumia Abu Jamal? This short video details the facts of how the Philadelphia legal system and U.S. government have knowingly allowed an innocent man to sit in prison in order to continue their counter insurgency program and oppression of Black Americans.

Manufacturing Guilt, the short film from Stephen Vittoria, producer and director of Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary, takes on the colossus of Abu-Jamal's contentious case, distilling a mountain of evidence and years of oft-repeated falsehoods to the most fundamental elements of police and prosecutorial misconduct that illustrate a clear and conscious effort to frame Mumia Abu-Jamal for the murder of patrolman Daniel Faulkner.

Based on the actual record of investigations and court filings from 1995 to 2003—evidence denied by the courts and ignored in the press--Manufacturing Guilt cuts through the years of absurdities and overt racism to produce a clear picture of how Abu-Jamal's guilt was manufactured and his innocence suppressed beginning only moments after he and Faulkner were found shot in the early morning hours of December 9th, 1981. This historic and courageous film is the perfect companion to Long Distance Revolutionary —a film that is unequivocal in its force regarding Abu-Jamal's innocence.

TIME (2020)

Fox Rich is a fighter, abolitionist and mother of six boys who’s spent the last two decades campaigning for the release of her husband, Rob G. Rich, who is serving a 60-year sentence for a robbery they both committed in the early 90s in a moment of desperation.

“Combining the video diaries Fox has recorded for Rob over the years with intimate glimpses of her present-day life, director Garrett Bradley paints a mesmerizing portrait of the resilience and radical love necessary to prevail over the endless separations of the country’s prison-industrial complex.”

The Trials of Darryl Hunt (2016)

The Trials of Darryl Hunt" is a feature documentary about a wrongly convicted man, Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Both a social justice story and a personally driven narrative, the film chronicles this capital case from 1984 through 2004. With exclusive footage from two decades, the film frames the judicial and emotional response -- and the implications that reverberate from Hunt's conviction - against a backdrop of class and racial bias in the South and in the American criminal justice system.

This documentary is the culmination of ten years of research and filming. In 1993, inspired by claims of injustice and police conspiracy, the filmmakers began to shoot in North Carolina. Working from a mix of formats (16mm and 24P video) the film melds the visceral reality of a murder case with first person accounts and cinematic imagery, illuminating perceptions and memories of events as they unfolded for the people closest to this haunting story.

Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2013)

In the United States there are 2.2 million people in prison, up from only 300,000 forty years ago, yet for most Americans, prisons have never felt more distant or more out of sight. A cinematic journey through a series of seemingly ordinary American landscapes, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (by Brett Story) excavates the hidden world of the modern prison system and explores lives outside the gates affected by prisons.

By examining the impact of mass incarceration from outside the prison walls, the film takes us to unexpected locations — from a California mountainside where female prisoners fight raging wildfires, to a Bronx warehouse with goods destined for the state correctional system, to a rural Kentucky mining town that now depends on the local penitentiary for jobs. The film visits two communities – Baltimore and St. Louis County, Missouri – bristling from racially motivated violence and rising tensions between African American communities and police, where we meet a Missouri woman who ends up in jail because she didn’t put her garbage bin lid on properly. And in New York, we meet a formerly incarcerated chess player and join family members on a dark street corner waiting for the bus to Attica. 

The Farm: Angola, USA (1998)

Over one year, filmmakers followed the stories of six people; among the film's subjects is a 22-year-old arrival who's only just beginning his life sentence, and a death row inmate who allows cameras to accompany him as he enjoys his last meal. 85% of inmates will die behind bars, viewers learn, including Logan "Bones" Theriot, an inmate slowly succumbing to lung cancer and whose naked grief we are allowed to witness.

This nominee for the 1999 Best Documentary Feature Oscar takes viewers into one of the nation's most infamous correctional facilities: the Louisiana State Penitentiary, America's oldest and largest maximum security prison. Imprisoning nearly 5,000 inmates at the time of filming, it is known as the "Alcatraz of the South" and "The Farm"—it is literally built on a plantation.

“Daily life in Angola is excruciating. Incarcerated people routinely work in the prison farm for as little as 4 cents an hour. The land that makes up the prison farm was a plantation prior to the Civil War, and the land was tended by enslaved people from the West African nation of Angola. Now? It is worked by a prison population that is 77% black.”

The Central Park Five (2012)

Directed by documentarian/historian extraordinaire Ken Burns, along with Sarah Burns and David McMahon, The Central Park Five delves into the 1988 case involving five teenagers wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in Central Park in New York City.

Free Angela & All Political Prisoners (2012)

Forty years after the high-stakes trial that catapulted 26-year-old scholar and Marxist feminist Angela Davis into the spotlight as a revolutionary icon, Shola Lynch’s 2012 documentary, “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” relives those transformative years of Davis’ life.

Even as she was branded a terrorist, Davis spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom. The portrait of that story reignites discussion on the radical movement she joined and eventually led, and it still holds the power to inspire a new generation to similar acts of collective progressivism, all in the name of political and social reforms.

Eyes of the Rainbow (1997)

Eyes of the Rainbow deals with the life of Assata Shakur, the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader who escaped from prison and was given political asylum in Cuba, where she has lived for close to 33 years. In it we visit with Assata in Havana and she tells us about her history and her life in Cuba.

This film is also about Assata's AfroCuban context, including the Yoruba Orisha Oya, goddess of the ancestors, of war, of the cemetery and of the rainbow. "In the struggle of the African American people, many women's voices in the past and the present have always called for social justice, women who throughout the years have shown integrity and firmness in their principles. For this reason, "The Eyes of the Rainbow" is dedicated to all women who struggle for a better world. ~ Gloria Rolando

Long Distance Revolutionary (2014)

The documentary follows the extraordinary journey of the journalist and revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been imprisoned in solitary confinement on death row in Pennsylvania, USA for 30 years. Since he was found guilty in 1982 of the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner on questionable evidence, America has been divided.

“The right wing has long expressed its undivided approval of the death sentence for “the cop killer,” while Mumia has become a left-wing icon and a symbol for freedom and justice in the United States and around the world. “Long Distance Revolutionary” is a tribute to the man, who with his indomitable courage has never stopped fighting for his own – and everyone else’s freedom.” - Monoduo Films

Shadows of Doubt (1999)

Vincent Alfred Simmons is an African-American man from Mansura, a small town in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. He is the son of Alzica and James Simmons, and has several siblings, including younger sisters Della and Olivia, and brother Philip "Bear" Simmons.He has said he got on the wrong side of the law, and committed infractions when young which resulted in his being sentenced to juvenile facilities. Later he was arrested but not convicted of burglary.

He left Avoyelles Parish for several years, living in Texas. People warned him not to return to Louisiana, where he had attracted the attention of local parish police. A week after his return, he was arrested as a suspect in the rape of two white minor girls. He maintains that he is innocent of that crime.

Learn more at https://www.freevincent.com

The House I Live In (2012)

An investigative look at America's war on drugs and its impact on the criminal justice system, with a focus on the experiences of Nannie Jeter, a former employee of filmmaker Eugene Jarecki's family.

Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live in tells the stories of individuals at all levels of America's War on Drugs and offers a penetrating look inside America's criminal justice system, revealing the profound human rights implications of U.S. drug policy. A two year campaign will use the film to amplify state and national efforts to review and reconsider U.S. drug policy.

Jalil Muntaqim - Voice of Liberation (2002)

This 20-minute documentary was edited & produced in November 2002 by Eve Goldberg and Claude Marks, based on an interview done in August 2000 by John O'Reilly and Nina Dibner.

Jalil Abdul Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom) was 19 years old when he was arrested at the same time as Nuh Washington. He is a former member of the Black Panther Party and is one of the longest held political prisoners in the world. This documentary is a unique opportunity to visit and hear Jalil's story.

After Innocence (2005)

Filmmaker Jessica Sanders documents the experiences of a group of wrongfully convicted men after they are exonerated based on DNA evidence for crimes they didn't commit. Without their records being expunged, and having served long sentences without parole, exonerates struggle to re-enter society. After serving time for over a decade, former inmate Vincent Moto experiences the challenges of trying to find employment when he has to admit he was once convicted of a crime on application.

The documentary tries to makes sense of how exoneration does not simply erase the negative impact the criminal justice system has had on exonerees, and the need for reentry programs that help formerly incarcerated individuals.