Atlanta Film Festival

April 10-19, 2008

by Gloria Stanley

The Atlanta Film Festival kicked off its 32nd annual film festival with the world premiere of The Lena Baker Story at the Atlantic Station Cinema. It was a red carpet affair where Ralph Wilcox, writer, director and producer of the Lena Baker Story graced the red carpet along with his entourage of actors Tichina Arnold (Lena Baker) from "Everybody Loves Chris," Beverly Todd (the mother) from "The Bucket List," Michael Rooker (the sheriff) and Chris Burns (Elliot Arthur's son).

The Lena Baker Story was filmed in Colquitt, Georgia at the Southwest Film Commission's Jokara-Micheaux Film, Television, and Music Production Studio. The filming is an adaptation from a script by Dr. Lela Phillips, a professor at Andrew College in Cuthbert, which portrays racial injustice in the Jim Crow-era South of a black woman (Lena Baker) who was the first and only woman to ever die in Georgia's electric chair.

Ralph Wilcox said, "This film….dealt with four issues that are really continuing today - abuse, addiction, the death penalty and the fourth and foremost is our faith."

Tichina Arnold said, "when you think you are comfortable, God gives you something greater." She said this opportunity was God-sent because she was able to film between tapings of "Everybody Loves Chris." She said, "Wilcox is one of the best directors she has ever worked with in her career."

Chris Burns said, "Ralph Wilcox is by far one of, if not the best director. There are certain things that you can tell when you are on a set but success isn't one of them."

Baker (June 8, 1901 - March 5, 1945) was born in Randolph County, Georgia, five miles southwest of Cuthbert where she met Elliot Arthur, an abusive, pistol-toting, gristmill operator, who forced her into sexual slavery in 1941. The controversial affair and abuse escalated over the next three years. In 1944, in an effort to escape, Baker physically got into an altercation with Arthur at the gristmill and accidentally shot him in the head.

On August 14, 1944, an all white jury of twelve men in a one day trial found Baker guilty and sentenced her to death in Georgia's electric chair for first-degree murder. Baker's final words before she was executed at Reidsville State Penitentiary were, "What I done, I did in self-defense. I have nothing against anyone….I am ready to meet my God."

In August 2005, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles pardoned Baker because she was denied clemency, a procedure where she could have been charged with a lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter.

Gabriel Wardell, executive director of the film festival, says more than 150 films will be featured from the 16-hundred submitted during the run of the festival at Atlanta's Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, April 10th through April 19th.

See our exclusive photos from the red carpet premiere here.