In The Land Of The Free
Event date: April 02, 2011 14:00
Published by group:
1 in 12 Club
Tagged as: repression social_struggles
1in12 Club
21-23 Albion Street
Bradford
BD1 2LY
Places:
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Hearing that three men have spent the better part of 30 years, not only behind bars but in solitary confinement is a shocking truth. To then realising that this is happening in the USA is simply jaw dropping.
In The Land Of The Free it is made abundantly clear that the Angola 3 are almost certainly wrongfully imprisoned but, crucially, it does allow for both sides of the case to be heard.
The Angola Prison gained its name due to the slaves, who used to work the land where it now stands, being from said country. This is just one of the small ironies the film subtly highlights.
The inmates of Angola Prison, mostly black due to the population of Louisiana, still work the surrounding land. In fact the case of the Angola 3 is rife with wicked coincidences which highlight that, in this case, the American Judicial system has failed to a catastrophic extent.
Charting the stories of Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King who found themselves part of the Black Panther movement and “fighting for our freedom” in a country where Blacks were deemed second rate citizens the film in no ways tries to project these men as squeaky clean. Indeed by their own admission they were all criminals at one time or another. Woodfox confesses to a particularly entertaining episode of stealing a cement mixer just for the fun of it, before being seen by the police and making a run for it. But whether or not they are killers is what the film sets out to highlight.
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