Tigre Hill

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Philadelphia native Tigre Hill is a critically and popularly acclaimed filmmaker who is best known for his first documentary, “The Shame of a City.” The feature-length documentary, which catapulted Hill into the local and national political spotlight, is widely credited for helping elect popular reform candidate Michael Nutter to Philadelphia mayoral office in 2007. The film, independently released in 2006, followed moderate Republican mayoral candidate Sam Katz (Philadelphia) as he unsuccessfully sought to defeat incumbent Democrat John Street in 2003 in a race that made national news when an FBI bug was found in Street’s office. Hill’s film gained widespread attention for exposing many high-ranking Street supporters as disingenuous opportunists who intentionally and falsely manipulated racial tensions and suspicion of President George W Bush's administration to get Street re-elected despite a string of corruption indictments in his inner circle that threatened to implicate him directly.

“The Shame of a City” quickly became a mechanism favored by local politicians, journalists, academics and activists to address the endemic problems of a city once referred to as “corrupt and contented.” The timing of these civic discussions inarguably benefited reformer and former city council member Nutter, who was by then attempting to succeed Street by securing the Democratic primary vote for mayor against two Street supporters portrayed negatively in Hill’s movie: Congressmen Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah. After receiving Hill’s endorsement, Nutter himself screened “The Shame of a City” five times to sold-out audiences, using it to raise money and awareness of his opponents’ admitted nefarious political techniques. In the primary election of May 2007, Nutter went from underdog to winner then proceeded to statistically annihilate his opponent in the general election.

The film won numerous awards (most notably “Best Feature-Length Film” at the 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival's Festival of Independents) and generated monumental amounts of press, earning Hill an interview on MSNBC, named references in five successive issues of Philadelphia Magazine, and positive reviews by The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. Screenings were sponsored by highly respected and diverse institutions ranging from the FBI to Philadelphia magazine to philebrity.com and were held at venerable locations like the National Constitution Center. The film, beyond solidifying Hill’s reputation as a serious filmmaker who could maintain the respect of even the people vilified in his film, also provided an introduction to a Katz campaign consultant, Carl Singley, whose strongly positive appearance in the movie briefly made him the focus of an early, informal city-wide campaign for him to run for mayor – a municipal conversation legitimized by a feature article in Philadelphia magazine and silenced when Singley declined to run.

In late 2006, Hill tuned his sights to another Philadelphia controversy – this one 25 years old yet still painfully fresh in the minds of millions, not just in Southeastern Pennsylvania but around the globe. For Hill’s second documentary, he would tackle nothing less than the seething polemic that surrounds the world’s most famous death row inmate: Mumia Abu-Jamal.

This documentary, entitled “The Barrel of a Gun,” offers the most comprehensive examination to date of the murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and the conviction of black journalist-turned-cab-driver Mumia Abu-Jamal. The case has ignited world-wide controversy, with Abu-Jamal’s arrest and trial becoming a cause célèbre for celebrities, foreign dignitaries and human rights campaigners. For Faulkner supporters, however, the controversy serves as smoke and mirrors to obscure the truth behind a heinous crime.

Unlike any other film treatment to date -- most notably pro-Jamal documentaries “In Prison My Whole Life” and “A Case for Reasonable Doubt” – “The Barrel of a Gun” benefits from extensive access to principles on all sides of the debate as well as exhaustively researched and one-of-a-kind archival documentation to present an alternative view of the crime and the historical events that led up to and may have caused it. The film was shot in Philadelphia; Paris, France; San Francisco; Oakland; Los Angeles and several other American cities and includes on-camera interviews with luminaries such as widow Maureen Faulkner; Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell; prosecutor Joe McGill; Philadelphia district attorney Lynne Abraham; Abu-Jamal attorney Robert Bryan; celebrities Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, Danny Glover and Sister Helen Prejean; former Philadelphia police commissioner Sylvester Johnson; Pam Africa, head of The International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal and widow of MOVE founder John Africa; author David Horowitz and radio talk show host Michael Smerconish.

“The Barrel of a Gun” is expected to be released in 2009.

While Hill’s first feature narrative film, “Casanova’s Demise,” has yet to be released because of various legal issues, its inclusion of many local celebrities, as well as the buzz and media attention it garnered, first got Hill noticed in high-ranking Philadelphia circles. Plus, the content matter of the 2001 movie may have helped: Casanova’s Demise is the first film about a man sentenced to be castrated for raping a woman.

Hill was born in Pittsburgh and raised in the western Philadelphia neighborhood of Wynnefield in 1968. The son of a highly decorated Marine officer and a well-known educator, Hill attended Episcopal Academy in Merion (M. Night Shyamalan's alma mater) and Archbishop Carroll High School (Radnor, Pennsylvania), then graduated with a Speech and Communications degree from Temple University.