Mission
Submission
Films
Schedule
Tickets
Map
Special Screenings
Sponsors
Traveling Festival
Support
Volunteers
Press
Links
Awards
Contact
Home
Interview with an Executioner
(13 minutes) USA
Directors: Ken Russell and Nancy Brown
Producer: Terry McCaffery
Description:
Interview with an Executioner gives us Don Cabana, from his days as a warden at Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi to his anti-death penalty work thirty years later. Cabana describes the emotional pain of carrying out executions, and in one particular case, the near-certainty that he executed an innocent man. While Cabana was a prison warden, the BBC filmed a documentary about the inmate Edward Earl Johnson. That documentary went behind the scenes in the penitentiary to the mysterious, secretive world of the execution process. Warden Cabana appears in the ë70s BBC film as an earnest and hardworking man doing his job. In the present day, Interview with an Executioner reveals the feelings we didnít know were under the surface. It allows us to consider that in the executionerís mind there can be doubts, remorse, and a questioning of the fairness of executions. Cabana reveals how he could not reconcile his Catholic faith with the dirty work of an executioner.
Biography:
Terry McCaffrey is the Western Region Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator
for Amnesty International. He is also a founding member of California
People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty. He has played a leading
role in the pursuit of a Death Penalty Moratorium as a strategy towards
abolition of the death penalty.
Nancy Brown is an award-winning video producer and San Francisco Bay Area editor, television producer, studio engineer, and lighting technician. She teaches video and TV production to adults and young people. Nancy holds a Masterís degree in communication as a graduate of Stanford's Documentary Film and Video program. Her work appears in The Art of Being Tuareg, a Cantor Arts Center exhibit opening in Los Angeles in October (2006) at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Ken Russell is a former television producer and instructor in Palo Alto. He served on the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission and was a legislative assistant for the ACLU in Sacramento. He is currently a student at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Contact Information:
Nancy Brown, Director
nbbro@earthlink.net
©2006 United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF)
FILMS
America's Brutal Prisons
Are the Kids Alright?
Baghdad ER
Between Two Stones: Nepal's Decade of Conflict
Beyond Iraq
Beyond the Call
The Blood of Yingzhou District
Blowing Up Paradise
Busting Out
Bystander
Epitaph
In the Tall Grass
Independent Intervention
Interview with an Executioner
La Sierra
Lessons in Fear
Lima's Streets
Malaria: Killer Number One
The Man Who Saved a Million Brains
The Peacekeepers
Pilgrimage
Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border
Rosita
The Shape of Water
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars
Small Town Gay Bar
They Chose China
Thin
The Tribe
True Whispers
The Tsunami Generation