Legal Aid Society screening of SCENES OF A CRIME and Presentation with Expert on False Confessions
Aviva Michelman-Dumas
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“SCENES OF A CRIME” explores a nearly 10-hour interrogation that culminates in a disputed confession, and an intense, high-profile child murder trial in New York state.
The AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION and the AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION have each recognized SCENES OF A CRIME in their annual lists of “outstanding” works.
The New York Times says, “This smart, cool-headed film, which has a ‘Rashomon’-like vision of the case, presents a disturbing picture of courtroom justice.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan says, “If you watch ‘Scenes of a Crime’ — and you very much should — be prepared to be outraged. A cool documentary that makes the blood boil, it examines how people can be psychologically manipulated into confessing.”
Variety called the film “absorbing and provocative.”
The film won an IFP Gotham Independent Film Award (“Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You”), won the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC in the “Viewfinders” section in November.
Police video-recordings allow directors Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock to unravel the complicated psychological dynamic between detectives and their suspect during a long interrogation.
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