THE FARM: 10 DOWN

Premieres on The National Geographic Channel Tuesday, June 16th
@ 8PM Eastern/ Pacific!

Please note the official television title of the film is :
A DECADE BEHIND BARS: RETURN TO THE FARM

Please check your local listings

David and Mara:

I just wanted to let you know how pleased I am to have had the opportunity to work with Jonathan and Highest Common Denominator on this extraordinary film. 

In a medium where projects can sometimes be disposable, it was a pleasure to work on such a well crafted and thought-provoking project. 

Here’s hoping for great ratings and other great projects in the future. 

Best, 

Mike Welsh, Executive Producer, National Geographic Channel

THE FARM: 10 DOWN

Premieres on The National Geographic Channel Tuesday, June 16th

as “A DECADE BEHIND BARS: RETURN TO THE FARM” @ 8PM Eastern/Pacific

VIEW THE TEASER TRAILER FOR THE FARM: 10 DOWN

It was an interesting trip to Madrid for me this month. I lived in Spain as a teenager, in a small town in Granada, and have returned many times. Some of my best memories from that period of my life are from Spain, so that country and its landscape hold great meaning for me. On this trip, I had come to Madrid to participate in the Madrid Documentary Festival. Four years earlier my film, LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR won the festival’s Audience Award. This time I returned with THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION, a short documentary based on a Redemption Road, a novel by Liberian writer Elma Shaw. Elma wrote about Bendu, a young woman who was forced to join the rebel army as a young girl, during her Liberia’s nearly two decade long civil war. The novel takes place in the years following the war, when Bendu finds herself overwhelmed with guilt and shame for her actions while under threat of death.

I met Elma Shaw a little over a year ago, when I was in Liberia making a film for Amnesty International about women after war. Amnesty International wanted to highlight the lack of reintegration support for women who had been child soldiers during the war. Elma had returned to work with an NGO after living in the Diaspora (in Washington DC). The Amnesty International Producer, Tania Bernath had met Elma at the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings. Tania and I were both immediately drawn to Elma’s spirit and intelligence. When I found out that she was about to finish her book, it struck me as an intriguing device to include readings from her book as narration for a film.

I wanted to make a film that had a different spirit than maybe the more typical documentary about war. Certainly it would include the fear, violence and tragedy that the war created, but it would also be gentle and hopeful, even loving, for there is something about the women we met and worked with – Elma, Florence Ballah, Jackie Redd and Mickey Kesseley – that struck me as both powerful and empathetic. Indeed, I accessed the footage from the one shoot to make both the Amnesty piece and THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION. The films are different though, Redemption Road is a bit more poetic and WOMEN OF LIBERIA: FIGHTING FOR PEACE for Amnesty International is a more utilitarian portrait.

I actually shot this film. Mostly a decision that was required under the circumstances (I was the only one who had any experience shooting) and in fact I loved it. It is very healing and satisfying to be the shooter and the director. I wonder now, could I shoot other films? Not feeling confident about my hand held capacity, the entire movie is shot from a tripod. At least no shaky shots… Clearly there are some films that require hand held, but this one worked very well with a more controlled aesthetic.

My recommendation to young documentary filmmakers is to learn all the skills for filmmaking (camera, sound, editing) so that they can, if there is no other choice, do it themselves as well as up the chances of being hired for other filmmakers work…If I could it over again, I’d have learned them all.

I am awakened this morning to a view of snowcapped peaks, the sun finally emerging after the normally erratic mountain weather. Sadly, we go home today. My daughter Talula returns to school and I return to work.

It’s been a wonderful few days at Mountain Film in Telluride, Colorado, a festival where THE FARM: TEN DOWN had its premiere. And while the festival focuses mostly on the environment with this year’s emphasis on ‘food’, there’s an open and mindful spirit here such that all ideas are embraced as part of a bigger look at global issues.

The film played beautifully, and the biggest treat was having Ashanti Witherspoon there (and his wife Susan). Not surprisingly, he’s the one everyone is hungry to hear from… and this is as it should be. Bottom line is Ashanti spent almost 30 years behind bars. I simply came to tell his story. When given the chance most people want to meet the person who has lived the story rather then the storyteller. Primary experience rules…..

Talula declared upon watching my film that it was the best one at the festival. This wasn’t surprising since we didn’t see any other films (a lot of time going up the gondola, visiting the water falls, hanging out in town, rock climbing). What was amazing is that she actually managed to watch it from start to finish and had good questions to boot. For example, she wanted to know if while in prison, a man can go from bad to good, and what was it that made them go from good to bad in the first place. No easy answers to that one.

I personally remain convinced that while the majority of people in prison have done bad things, relatively few are actually bad people. When immersed in a positive environment people will exhibit positive behavior and the reverse holds true as well. I remember a young man who was in a film I did many years ago, HARLEM DIARIES. Teenager Cass Calonzo (an immigrant from the Congo who was at Rikers when I met him) said to me that when he looked out his door there were junkies and drug dealers on every corner and that if he did nothing but hang out in front of his home he’d get in trouble. To do well he had to travel by subway. Simply put, it was a hell of a lot easier to do bad than do good. (Side note is that he was eventually deported back to Africa, where he had lived only until 5, but returned years later to Canada where had been living a successful life ever since).

A true confession is that while making THE FARM: TEN DOWN (and before I even started) I was anxious that it not be simply a ‘dvd’ but stand on its own as a valid film. No doubt, my nervousness was compounded by the success of the original film THE FARM which was an almost perfect project in all aspects. And let’s face it, sequels are troubling and challenging. They usually fail to satisfy. I don’t claim that this film works as well as the first one, but it is its own phenomenon. The ten year journey, including the release of Ashanti and the Bishop, is amazing content. In the end, if THE FARM’s central theme was ‘to err is human, to forgive Divine’ than this film provides an opportunity to witness the value of forgiveness over time.

No doubt that Ashanti and Bishop have much to offer all of us. Here in Telluride, that leg of the journey has begun.

This morning I read that Douglas Dennis, died from a heart attack suffered while serving out his life sentence in Angola for a murder that took place in the 1950’s. I only knew him by his nickname Swede.

Swede was the most intriguing man in that place. Sarcastic, bitter, but funny and brilliant. I used to bring him New Yorker Magazines which he loved and we’d talk about almost any topic imaginable as though he had been everywhere and thought of everything. No doubt about it, Swede was the smartest person in Angola and a good storyteller.

Over the years, I asked Swede every time I saw him if I could make a film about his story.  He was always resistant, saying that if he did that he ran the risk of losing the ‘nickels’ the prison afforded him, meaning the bits of freedom he had achieved within the system. You see Swede had escaped in 1979 and was free and living successfully in Silicon Valley, California until 1989. Eventually he was picked up and brought back to serve the rest of his life sentence. As a risk threat he was never permitted to travel.

The crazy part of the story is that Swede was picked up for drunkenness while on a cross country road trip, ended up in the drunk tank with another man, got into a fight and the guy died.  He had no record until then.  That was in the 1957, the day I was born.  In the early 1960’s he got into a fight with another inmate in Angola and was sent to death row until 1976.  In 1979, while working for the Governor he escaped out of Baton Rouge, apparently first traveling to Central America and later returning back to California.

It would have been powerful for him to share his story with the world and ironically, the last time we met he actually indicated he’d consider doing it.  Maybe somebody else can still tell his story, but I’ll always feel that I let it get away somehow except inside of me.

I remember Swede telling me the night that Antonio James was executed in 1996 that he wasn’t sad, but a bit envious.  The other inmates working at the Angolite said, ‘Tell him Swede, tell him what you do every night!”.   Gruff as always, he said, “every night before sleep, I kneel down to pray. I ask God, please don’t let me wake up in the morning’.
For him, it was preferable to be dead then to serve forever in Angola. Well, he finally got his wish…