Check out the sequel to THE FARM – premiering on the National Geographic Channel as A DECADE BEHIND BARS: RETURN TO THE FARM on June 23rd, 2009 at 4pm EST.

In 1998 we premiered THE FARM at the Sundance Film Festival. I couldn’t even sit in the theater, but paced outside  on pure nerves, peeking in from time to time to feel the audience response.  Ninety minutes later the credits rolled, the applause began, the standing ovation and the energy it inspired were harbingers of good times ahead. Its success (we were Grand Jury Prize winners) shaped my career in ways I can never fully understand.

Last week, on June 3rd, over a decade later, I premiered THE FARM: TEN DOWN in Angola Prison.  The setting could not have been further removed from Park City, Utah.  Instead of a big screen in a theater, we were watching on a large size television monitor in the visiting room of the prison. Instead of filmmakers, film fanatics, media, festival directors, there were 400 inmates, guards and administrators.  Then beyond the visiting room the film was being broadcast on Angola’s closed circuit television station so the other 4500 men in the prison could also watch the film and the Q&A that was to follow.

This time I was a lot more nervous.

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As crazy as this seems, Bishop Eugene Tannehill, the man in the FARM who had spent 50 years behind bars is now living 10 blocks from my home in Brooklyn. What’s more amazing is just how incredibly smooth the transition was.  The reason is his faith in God is so strong that nothing shakes him.  His energy is unequaled..In his mid 70’s he still jogs daily and whenever given the opportunity he lets loose in his preachings as though he were back in Angola channeling the drams and hopes of 5000 men and the scripture of the Good Book.   I was at his house recently and he reminded me that the first time we met he told me, God had a plan for him and it included New York City.  Well here he is and New York barely knows what they’ve got in their midst.

We’re filming this week and he’s going to play Saxophone with world class jazz bass player, Curtis Lundy (who also scored THE FARM 10 years ago).  We’re filming it so you can see for yourself.

We are thrilled to announce that our film, The Road to Redemption has been accepted into the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.