Fourteen Days in May (1987)
- Directed by
- Paul Hamann
- Genre
- documentary film
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Runtime
- 1h 27m
- Rating
- 5.5 of 10 from 13 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
This documentary follows the final two weeks of an American prisoner who is scheduled for execution. He maintains his innocence, and the film shows his interactions with prison staff and his family.
sombertension-filledintimatereflectivedistressingslow-pacedunflinchingsomber
What happens
Fourteen Days in May is a documentary film directed by Paul Hamann and originally shown on television by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1987. The programme recounts the final days before the execution of Edward Earl Johnson, an American prisoner convicted of rape and murder and imprisoned in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Johnson protested his innocence and claimed that his confession had been made under duress. He was executed in Mississippi's gas chamber on 20 May 1987. The documentary crew, given access to the prison warden, guards and chaplain and to Johnson and his family, filmed the last days of Johnson's life in detail. The documentary argues against the death penalty and maintains that capital punishment is disproportionately applied to African-Americans convicted of crimes against whites. The programme features attorney Clive Stafford Smith, an advocate against capital punishment. Fourteen Days in May won a British Film Institute Grierson Award and a top prize at the Festival dei Populi. It has been shown in many countries but has only appeared in an abbreviated form in the United States, on HBO. Hamann disowned this shortened version. It was in direct response to this documentary that the Lifelines organisation was set up, to organise pen pals for death row prisoners. The 1988 track '14 Days in May' by British rapper Overlord X contains samples from this documentary and can be found on the compilation album Street Sounds Hip Hop 20. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
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Landscape Suicide (1987)
Comeback (1987)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.