Going to Cannes
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At Thursday’s sold-out Atlanta Film Festival opener “The Lena Baker Story,” writer-director Ralph Wilcox wasted no time dropping news on the red carpet. He’s signed a deal with Los Angeles-based distributor American World Pictures and his film will screen at May’s Cannes Market for potential worldwide distribution.
Made in Colquitt, Ga. and set mostly in the 1940s, “Lena Baker” is the real-life story of the only woman ever to be executed in the state’s electric chair. She was later posthumously pardoned.
Tichina Arnold, who stars in the title role, arrived at Atlantic Station for the film’s world premiere in a bright purple short dress and a showstopping pair of tan Yves Saint Laurent boots.
“I love wearing boots but it’s hot as hell here,” Arnold said with a big laugh. She’s been taping episodes of her TV sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris” in Los Angeles and thought it would be a bit colder in Georgia.
Baker’s sad, affecting story involved mistreatment by her white employer (played by Atlanta actor Chris Burns), who beat her, and his father (played by Peter Coyote), who held her captive as a sex slave. After Coyote’s character is killed in a struggle with Baker over a gun, she was quickly convicted and later executed.
“Lena’s legacy has been to inspire and that all her trials and tribulations did not go in vain.” Arnold said. “What attracted me to this story is that it is so parallel to what a lot of women live right now — being abused by their counterparts or their husbands. Lena was always stuck between that rock and a hard place. She wasn’t afforded many opportunities.”
Wilcox, clad in a sleek black tuxedo, reveled in the joy of a world premiere screening of the first full-length feature to emerge from his 22,000-square-foot production studio in southwest Georgia.
He remembered arriving in the area with big ideas about making movies and being greeted with raised eyebrows.
“When I came down there they were looking at me, talking about how, you know, ‘He’s got to be hiding from somebody. We do peanuts and cotton here and you’re talking about the movie business. Who you runnin’ from?’” Wilcox said with a laugh.
“But there is something to be said about competence and faith and commitment to your beliefs,” he said. “I have gone down where there is nothing and by God’s grace I’ve been able to galvanize a real force of excitement. Sometimes that’s all it takes — a spirit of excitement and all of a sudden everybody feeds into that vision.”
He also said he hoped “Lena Baker” would make moviegoers think deeply about themselves and relationships.
“We need to get a real dialog going on who we are and what we mean and represent to one another,” he said. “Because while we can see visible change (in treatment over the years), what about the fabric of our soul? That is what is the final moment of how we ultimately define ourselves as a people and a species.”
The Cannes Market, where “Lena Baker” will be screened on May 16, is an annual companion to the Cannes Film Festival.