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Interview with Will Francome

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by Phil Moore
One of the most powerful films showing at this year’s Times BFI London Film Festival is In Prison My Whole Life. It tells the story of Mumia Abu Jamal, one of America’s most well known death row inmates and also a journalist and activist arrested and sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer, whose campaign has attracted worldwide attention. This incisive documentary unfolds through the eyes of Will Francome, who was born on the same day as Mumia’s arrest. Filmmaker and writer Phil Moore spoke to Will on the eve of the festival.

How are you part of Mumia’s story?
I grew up in quite a political family. My parents were hippies and my mum as well as being a social worker and therapist is an activist and my Dad is a sociologist. I grew up in London, but moved to the States at the age of 12 to where my mother had grown up. When we first moved to Long Island, it was quite an isolating experience, and I think for my mother especially she found it quite politically different to what she was used to. She started listening to a New York radio station called WBAI which is pretty politically progressive and liberal. Around that time, there were murmurs around Mumia's case and he started to feature on the radio. My mother had heard of him and so he was known in the house but at some point she had also told me about him because of the connection with my birthday and so I was always intrigued by it. By 1994 he was really getting some attention and when 'Live From Death Row' was released there was suddenly quite a hub of activity surrounding him. By 1996, National Public Radio had decided to air some of his current affairs broadcasts nationwide but Ross Perot challenged it in the senate and threatened to take away NPR's funding so the broadcasts were dropped at the last moment. In the midst of all this, bands like Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys were rallying behind Mumia and I was a teenage kid picking up on a lot of it.

It's weird, cos you don't remember your whole life; nobody can, so to think that Mumia had been in isolation longer than I could even remember terrified me. I started reading about the case and had read 'Live From Death Row' which I felt was pretty powerful. I remember one year going to a rally in Manhattan to support Mumia on my birthday and dragging along my little sister. It was kind of a strange birthday outing for the family. I feel that with or without the coincidence of my birth, Mumia's story would have no doubt still made it into my life.
Tell us about Mumia’s arrest and his subsequent imprisonment.
As far as we know Mumia had been driving a cab that night, although an established journalist by this time, he needed some extra cash. He was driving in downtown Philly [Philadelphia] when he saw some sort of dispute going on between a white police officer and his brother Billy Cook.  Naturally he pulled over and headed towards it to find out what was going - this is as far as we can be certain on.  From here, within seconds, shots were fired, which resulted in the Officer, Daniel's Faulkner's death, and Mumia also being shot in the chest.  Moments later the police arrived and Mumia was arrested at the scene of the crime.  He was taken to hospital immediately, where officers were with him until he made a full recovery and was then arrested for Faulkner's murder.  

However, the main thing to consider is this: the police at the time and the forensic work at the time was either so sloppy I'd consider it criminally negligent or it was suppressed. In the film we feature brand new photographs that have been unearthed after a quarter of a century that show a police officer handling both guns in one hand without any gloves! They also didn't do basic tests on Mumia's hands or the gun to see whether it had been fired. Everyone knows this is just basic procedure and they didn't fail to test other suspects’ hands the following day! People have looked into facts since the case happened and nobody's been able to prove whether he's completely innocent or guilty, but what we can say, is that the scenario put forth by the prosecution for 1st degree murder is unlikely. I think after looking into the case for many years now that a scenario of Mumia shooting in defence, or someone else shooting are much more likely than the cold blooded murder that he's been convicted of.  

Outside of the actual facts underlying guilt or innocence, you have a trial which was fundamentally flawed. Amnesty International have said that the trial failed to meet the international standards for fair trials and have called for a retrial to look at the case again. As well as a racist judge and a racially imbalanced jury, Mumia's own defence was woefully inadequate. It was just a shambles and after 15 days Mumia was sentenced to die by electrocution.

Since the trial, a lot of the original evidence and testimonies have been found to be flawed. A supposed confession from Mumia in the hospital has been called into question by many, including the attending doctor. And many wonder why the police who testified to it waited two months to mention it to anyone and then did so at the same time. Also Cynthia White, the prosecution's main witness was found to be a police informant who had also testified falsely in other trials.

What's important to remember is that this happened at a time in Philadelphia where racial tension was massive and the police and the black community were nearly at each other's throats. This affected every aspect of the case. Mumia had been the Black Panther minister of information when he was a teenager, had been a left leaning journalist who had continually spoke out against the police and had been a supporter of MOVE, a collective who had had violent run-ins with the police, which ended in the bombing of their house in Philadelphia killing all but 2 of the inhabitants and burning down a neighbourhood. I'm not saying that any of this makes Mumia innocent or points to corruption, but the cops knew who he was and it affected his trial and has been ever since.

How did you set out to make this film?
It had always been in my mind, that it would be a great idea to make a documentary about Mumia but the time was never right. I moved from New York back to England when I was 18 and I went to Sussex University to study sociology.  When I finished in 2003, I stuck around in Brighton working in pubs and generally having fun, but for the first time I had internet access and started reading up on Mumia's case again. I had this idea to do a documentary about my going to find out about the case and using my birthday as a connection point.  At the time my sister was working in TV and I pitched the idea to her and she took it to various commissioning editors and the answer was a resounding no, “we're not really interested in this sort of thing.” So it sort of died down a bit. I ran a pub for a year and a half, but after a while my girlfriend Katie and I moved to Brooklyn.

When we moved back to England, I mentioned it to her and she was very positive and thought that it was a very good idea. She pushed me to do some research and make some contacts so I started emailing people close to Mumia, academics and commentators and I got quite a few good responses! Katie and I typed up a little proposal and we started telling people about it. We had never done anything like this so we were winging it really.

We mentioned it to lots of people and hoped that people could be able to advise us. Before we knew it, Livia Firth, who's married to the actor Colin Firth, heard about it from a friend. She liked the sound of it and her brother Nicola called up Katie and we all met for a coffee to talk about it. The rest is history really. We'd already made quite a few connections but once Livia came on board, things moved a lot faster and she was able to utilise a lot of her contacts to help facilitate it all. It was great as everything started actually falling into place and within a month we did our first bit of filming in Paris when they named a street after Mumia in a Parisian suburb.

Director Marc Evans got on board via Livia who had worked with him previously. Marc met me and Katie for a coffee and originally wanted the two of us to direct it and he would give a helping hand when it was needed. The idea was to grab a camera and just go make our own film. Livia however wanted Marc on board, as an experienced director and his name carries weight. To Livia's credit she saw it as a bigger project, saw the opportunity to make a bigger film, and the film is much better for it. Also, Marc's very democratic so you don't feel that you're losing your film or your story. It's worked out well, as it's become a bigger film than any of us felt it would, but also has retained its grass roots essence and personal story. I guess it's a battle that you have to go through, how to make a grass roots film which still appeals to the grass roots but also make it big enough that it will reach people who were previously out of the loop. I think if there was one guiding element to the whole project it was trying to make those two things come together.

Obviously the film is about a particular individual, at a particular time, in the US. How does Mumia’s story bear relevance to us?
Mumia's story is relevant in so many ways. Besides anything else, he's had an interesting life, and one that is representative of a African American male living in his time, which has its own place in American history: his activism as a high school student in the 70s, his involvement in the Black Panthers, and later in the Philadelphia collective MOVE and of course, the fact he is facing the death penalty which is still such an important issue in American society, and raises such important questions about how we value life, not to mention the presence of racism that runs throughout his case. The fact that Mumia speaks out about global issues, for me, makes him a relevant figure in today's society. No matter where he is, and what his situation is.... if a man who is facing his own death can draw people's attention to the suffering of so many other people, as well as raise crucial issues that as free people we should be talking more about, then this is definitely someone who is relevant, and who we can learn from.

What role will the film play in Mumia’s story (and, any thoughts on the documentary film as campaign)?
My dream would be that it opens up the case to people who haven't heard about it before. We've tried to make a popular film that will spread the word to people who might come to the film because they like Mos, Snoop or Steve Earles Music or are fans of Chomsky, Angela Davies, or Alice Walker. Perhaps they know a little about the case or have heard of the MOVE case or the Rosenbergs (both executed in the 50's - their son Robert features in the film). We've tried to bridge gaps by trying to create a little something for everyone and ways into the story for many different people and hopefully then they'll look into it more or take some action. If you're making a campaign film, you can only do so much. You give information to people and you hope that they will do whatever they feel is necessary. People have to stop waiting to be led by the hand and know that they can stand up and be heard. One film is not going to make the difference on its own, you need people to stop, think and speak out. If our leaders really wanted to export democracy, they'd spend a lot more time encouraging just that.

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