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Forty-eight-year-old filmmaker Fabrice Ziolkowski is
a lot more American than you might guess. Although he
was born in France, he grew up in Canada before
moving to Florida at age 12. After graduating from
high school there, he headed to California, studying
film at UC Santa Barbara and obtaining a
master’s degree in comparative literature at
UCLA.
In 1985, Ziolkowski returned to France, where he has
worked as a screenwriter for films, television series
and children’s animation shows. He has also
directed documentaries about everything from Chicago
and LA to the U.S. prison industry, modern dance in
France and Africa, and the oral art of storytelling.
He has also been a longtime member of the
human-rights group Amnesty International, which is
how he came to correspond with a Texas death-row
inmate named David Hicks.
The pair corresponded for three years; their evolving
relationship became the core of his latest
documentary, Death Letters, which explores the death
penalty in Texas. The film has been critically
praised and picked up in 13 European countries, but
it has received no interest from American television
outlets or film distributors. So, for the past three
weeks, Ziolkowski has been showing Death Letters at
universities across the U.S.; it makes its Southern
California premiere in UC Irvine’s Film and
Video Center on Thursday, March 13. We caught up with
Ziolkowski shortly before he screened his film at UC
Santa Barbara.
OC Weekly: What motivated you to do this movie?
Fabrice Ziolkowski: My motivation is to get Americans
to at least discuss the issue of the death penalty,
looking at it closely from all sides. For French
viewers (and Europeans in general), my motive was to
get them to understand the reasons why it was
abolished in all of Europe.
Do you believe the death penalty is racist?
The death penalty is not racist per se: it operates
within a class-justice system. Black, white or brown,
almost all the folks on death row are poor. Of
course, most poor folks in the U.S. are black or
brown, so . . .
What’s the main point about the death penalty
you want to communicate?
My main point is that the death penalty is an
important moral issue, which needs to be put out in
the open and discussed—and that something needs
to be done about it.
Did making the film change your thinking about the
death penalty? If so how?
The film did not change my mind about the death
penalty. It confirmed what I already felt was true.
Do you think the death penalty will ever be
overturned in the U.S.?
The death penalty could one day be abolished in the
U.S., but it’s going to be a long, hard road,
demanding some clear leadership from someone
courageous and unafraid to buck majority public
opinion—like the governor of Illinois, who
declared a moratorium on the death penalty.
What about Texas?
I believe the death penalty would and should be
overturned from a federal point of view, so Texas
would therefore have to comply.
What has the reaction been to your film in both
France and around the U.S.?
There has been a good reaction in France, especially
on TV, in the form of good reviews and the like.
Thanks to that reception, 12 other countries have
bought the show. But it’s never shown in the
U.S. and has not been picked up by American TV. So
this tour represents a series of first screenings on
U.S. soil.
Speaking of France, what do French people think about
Americans who criticize their country for not
supporting a war against Iraq?
I would say that when French people hear Americans
criticize them for their stand on Iraq, they think
basically: it figures. What else would you expect?
America stands for no criticism from anywhere else in
the world, so . . .
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