Petrelis Files

Oscar Doc on Executed Black Man Funded by SF Arts Agency

As an individual due-paying member of the Roxie Theater on 16th Street, I was happy to find fifty other people at a recent screening of Oscar nominated short documentaries. Always good to catch films there with an appreciative audience.

One of the richly-deserved nominated docs is "Last Day of Freedom" directed by Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, a queer married couple based in San Francisco's Mission District. Their terrific and contemplative film delves into how one black man was executed in America, told in a hand-drawn style. They describe their doc thus:

"When Bill Babbitt realizes his brother Manny has committed a crime he agonizes over his decision - should he call the police? "Last Day of Freedom," a richly animated personal narrative, tells the story of Bill’s decision to stand by his brother in the face of war, crime and capital punishment. The film is a portrait of a man at the nexus of the most pressing social issues of our day – veterans’ care, mental health access and criminal justice."

I highly recommend this short doc, which airs on February 22 at 7:30 pm on KQED in the Bay Area.

At the end of the film and on their web site, Hibbert-Jones and Talisman acknowledge and thank the San Francisco Arts Commission for their support. I reached out to Kate Patterson at the commission for details about any City funds that went toward creating this movie and she replied:

"I asked our grant staff and they indicated that this would have been an Individual Artist Grant. I looked in our database and found that one of the filmmakers Dee Hibbert-Jones received a $8,500 Individual Artist Grant in 2009."

Public money well-spent for this artistic and anti-capital punishment film. Watch this clip from KQED from "Last Day of Freedom" and tell your social media networks to tune in on Monday and see the entire doc: