The Rooftop Films 2008 Summer Series

Venue: on the lawn at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn

Directions: B/D/M/N/Q/R to DeKalb or C/G to Fulton / Lafayette. Enter park at Myrtle Ave. & Washington Park.

Rain Date: Sun., June 1 (check rooftopfilms.com or call 718-417-7362 for updates)

9:00PM: Films

Q&A with filmmakers Steve James & Peter Gilbert after the screening

Tickets: Free!

Presented in partnership with: IFC.com, New York magazine, Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership & Council Member Letitia James
IFC and Rooftop Films Present At the Death House Door (Steve James & Peter Gilbert | Huntsville, TX | 1:38:00)
Pastor Carroll Pickett oversaw 95 executions at a Texas prison, but the experiences changed his views forever. The makers of “Hoop Dreams” examine this contentious issue through the story of this unique anti-death penalty activist.
Carroll Pickett was a pastor in Huntsville, TX—a place best known for its many prisons and high number of executions—when two of his parishioners were taken hostage in an infamous prison riot in 1974. He was called in to try to broker peace, but his friends were eventually killed, and Pickett vowed to never return to that prison.
But years later, the prison asked him to become the chaplain, and he thought he could do some valuable work for the people there. Indeed he did, until suddenly his job description changed, and he was asked to be the minister presiding over executions. He would spend all day with the condemned, getting to know them, listening to their fears, concerns and confessions, and aiding any of their last wishes. Pickett agreed in principal with the death penalty, but he certainly had trepidation about the burden of task.
Over 15 years, he was at 95 executions, each a fascinating story. And over those years, Pickett's opinion of the death penalty changed completely.
"At the Death House Door," directed by Steve James and Peter Glibert (the director and producers of “Hoop Dreams”), is a gripping, fascinating, powerful film about Pickett, about a wrongly-executed man named Carlos De Luna and his family, and about the tragic moral mistake that is the death penalty. Pickett's character unfolds with a stately grace. Being an old-fashioned Texan, he's reluctant to reveal his emotions, a trait which only makes them burn with more ferocity as you see them shine through, as you watch an amazing evolution of a man's feelings and ideology. It’s a rare and stunning transformation to see in a documentary, or in life in general.
After every execution, Pickett recorded an audio diary of what happened and what he was thinking and feeling. Until the documentary, not even his family knew these tapes existed, and watching Picket re-listening to them in the film is one of the most harrowing looks into man's soul that you’ll ever see.
Finally, the execution of Hector De Luna, a man who Pickett suspected was innocent, is enough to set the ball in motion for Pickett to leave the prison and become an anti-death penalty activist. Emotionally, Pickett was verging on self-destruction. But he harnesses these core moral disturbances and uses them (and an array of factual evidence) to fight against the death penalty. He actively campaigns now, arguing that not only is the death penalty cruel and painful, not only are there irremediable mistakes made, not is the penalty ineffective as a criminal deterrent (there are hundreds more people on death row now than there were when it was reinstated 30 years ago), but it's a fundamentally immoral act, that's "not Christian, it's not American, and it's not Texan," a moral blight on our society which makes us weaker as a people.
"I'm angry," says Rose De Luna, the sister of the wrongly-executed Hector De Luna. "Stay that way," Pickett says.
** Watch “At the Death House Door” on IFC! **