Director/cinematographer Richard Bowens PSA about San Francisco-based The Garden Project is one example of his commitment to an organic philosophy of filmmaking. Bowen, who is repped as a spot director/cinematographer by Windmill Lane Productions, Santa Monica, originally attended a benefit for the program because one of his favorite authors, the poet/writer Wendell Berry, was slated to read at the event. After Berrys reading, which took place at San Franciscos Palace of Fine Arts, Lovelle Johnson, a former inmate and participant in The Garden Project, spoke about his experiences.
Ive never heard an audience be more attentive, recalls Bowen, whose credits as a feature DP include In Quiet Night, the Cameron Diaz-starrer Head Above Water, and Fair Game. You could have heard a pin drop in that room. He was just absolutely riveting, and he was speaking solely from the heart about what it meant to him to have become involved in this project.
A program that employs current and former inmates to grow produce on plots of land using organic farming methods, The Garden Project is one element of a program affiliated with San Francisco County Jails San Bruno facility. The program is designed to provide rehabilitation to prisoners while literally reaping the fruits of their work, which is done on a supervised plot of land at the jail facility. Former convicts are employed on other plots in the city of San Francisco. The produce grown is either donated to homeless shelters and hospices or sold to local restaurants or markets, with any proceeds going to support the program. A study conducted for the San Francisco Sheriff showed that inmates and ex-inmates who participate in The Garden Project have a significantly lower recidivism rate than those who do not. Within two years, those who have participated in the program had a 24% re-arrest rate compared to a 55% re-arrest rate for those who did not.
Johnson had first been arrested at age 16 in Kansas City and had spent most of his adult life in prison, including a stint at San Quentin. At the benefit, Bowen explained that Johnson recounted how The Garden Project taught him to reconnect with the land and by doing so, to get a perspective on his life that was the first thing that really helped him change. Johnsons reflections were so poignant that, after the reading, Bowen
approached Catherine Sneed, The Garden Projects director, and told her that he thought Johnson should be filmed. If you could capture the feeling he just put out, Bowen remembers telling Sneed, you could win converts all over the place for what youre doing.
That suggestion ultimately led to The Way Things Grow, a PSA directed and shot by Bowen with a crew of five. The PSA will begin airing on San Francisco-area stations in March. Bowen wrote the script for the spot, which Johnson narrates, based on words Bowen collaged from interviews with the former inmate. I thought Id never find the light, Johnson says in the PSA. I felt like I was dirt. Come to find out working in the dirt has a cleanness about it. Now theres a cleanness about me.
Awash in the saturated hues of vegetables, fruits, flowers, and plants which the program participants grow, the spot represents the transition from incarceration to involvement in the program, and ultimately, the spiritual sustenance of growing in the garden. To show this transformation, Bowen filmed Johnson in the jail and within the closely-supervised plot of land that is used by the prisoners to grow plants. Bowen did the spots pro-bono, obtaining a camera package from Panavision free of charge, and Windmill Lane footed the bill for the team that assisted Bowen during the shoot. Working closely with Bowen, Lisa Cheek at Mad River Post/ Santa Monica, edited the spot.
The images and editing of the PSA are a lesson in nurturing material directly out of the subject matter at hand. The spot has a score, for instance, which is a saxophone arrangement of Woody Guthries This Land is Our Land, a song which Bowen used because there was a very Woody Guthrie-John Steinbeck quality to all this, people having the land as their most basic connection. Other influences include Walker Evans, a photographer who shot realistic yet transcendent portraits of Americans and collaborated with James Agee on the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. [Evans photography] is all real, straightforward, looking-into-the-camera portraits of hard-working peopleaworking people and people who have been down on their luck, notes Bowen. Its about getting into the character and the face and really getting to see into another soul. And thats very much what I tried to do with every frame of this, make it beautiful but be totally direct.
Bowen continues to sing the praises of The Garden Project, and his involvement with the organization has led to further work developing a fundraising campaign, as well as a Website which will be associated with the PSA. Outside of pro bono work, Bowen directed currently-airing spots for Crest through DMB&B, New York. Bowen is repped for feature cinematography by United Talent Agency, Beverly Hills.
Bowen describes the experience the prisoners have in The Garden Project as an essential part of their rehabilitation. Theyve never nurtured anything, theyve never been really responsible for anything in their lives, Bowen explains. And all of a sudden, even if its just little arugula seedlings or something, its something that depends on them. And they can see very clearly, in a very short period of time, that things respond to their care and can be harmed by their neglect.
