January 13–20, 2000

hit and run

Mumia Movie Mystery

A young New York filmmaker now at work on a documentary about convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal says he wants to create "an unbiased piece that actually looks at the [Abu-Jamal supporters’] perspective and more or less takes apart the prosecution’s contentions."

Independent producer Michael Birenbaum says that his as-yet-unnamed feature-length documentary will be the first of three case histories of judicial misconduct he wants to produce, a series he’s titled "Undue Process." The 26-year-old filmmaker says he raised all the money for the Abu-Jamal film from "private sources," and not, as some critics contend, from any of the various Abu-Jamal support groups.

"They’re not funding me," he says. "I’m interviewing [Abu-Jamal supporters] and putting their voice in this, because it’s not a voice that you’re going to hear in the mainstream media."

Birenbaum’s travails last fall in shooting one part of his film — a revisionist on-location "re-enactment" of the 1981 killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner — were detailed in a recent City Paper article ("Lights, Cameras, Dredlocks," Dec. 23). Birenbaum blames the Rendell administration for prohibiting his company, On Point Productions, from filming at the actual 13th and Locust location where Faulkner was shot to death.

"I got a call from the film office and their lawyer that, by mandate of the mayor’s office and Ed Rendell, I could not use that location," Birenbaum charges. "They said it was due to the fact that a promise was made to [Faulkner’s widow] that no reenactment would be shot at the actual location."

Instead, On Point Productions set up at 17th and Pine in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, shooting scenes depicting Mumia Abu-Jamal as an innocent bystander who was shot and nearly killed by Faulkner.

"They basically tried to frustrate the production," says Birenbaum of the Rendell administration. "It’s not like I wasn’t expecting that. That’s why I had a backup location."

Film office director Sharon Pinkenson denies Birenbaum’s account of his conversation with her and her office.

"I told him it was a sensitive location to begin with," says Pinkenson. "But he could not use it because there had been a shooting there the week before. It was a dangerous place to do a reenactment of a shooting."

Pinkenson denies she ever mentioned a promise to Maureen Faulkner, widow of the slain officer, and Rendell himself denies that any such promise ever existed.

Birenbaum says all the shooting is finished for his Abu-Jamal documentary, with editing slated to start in February. Should On Point Productions’ various "distribution strategies" pan out, he says, Mumia: The Movie may soon be coming to a film festival near you.

—Noel Weyrich