Shot in black and white and composed of home videos & original footage, Garrett Bradley’s documentary TIME is a beautiful art piece. TIME follows the Rich family after their matriarch is sent to the Louisiana Prison system for a 60 year sentence. The story of Fox and Rob Rich, as told in TIME, is about family, hope, unity, and what it means to love hard. Here I speak with the Director, Garrett Bradley, on what called her to this family and the artistic choices she made with TIME.
We’re here to talk about your film TIME, but I want to start from the beginning. I was doing a little research on you and I saw that you’re from NY and both of your parents are artists. Was that the chosen path for you?
My parents were both painters and I think painting might be one of the hardest things to do. Because you really can’t fake it. You either can paint, or you can’t. So I never attempted that. But I think certainly being encouraged to be curious and to think about community and finding alternative ways of expressing myself helped shape who I am.
Another interesting bit of information that I found out about you was amongst studying art and film, you studied Religion in undergrad. I thought that was so interesting. What led you to that?
Yeah, I started off studying art history and a lot of the stories behind those paintings were religious stories. I ended up wanting to think about that, to work through that in a different kind of way. And I ended up getting a comparative degree. A degree that was looking at the comparison between both the presence and absence of God. And a comparative study between Hindu and Judaic Philosophies. And the Judaic Philosophy, the representation of God is absent. So there’s a certain kind of marking that remains even within the rasher of Gods presence. And in a different way with Hinduism it’s very much about site. Site as a form of religious merit.
Bringing it to the present, how did you hear about Fox and Rob’s case and what piqued your interest in the family’s story?
I met Fox in the process of making another film. I had made a short film called ALONE, which was a 13 minute op-doc with the New York Times. I always think it’s (NY Times Op-Docs) a choice for the young people or aspiring filmmakers who are reading this. Anybody can go to the New York Times Op-Doc page and submit and idea. I didn’t know anybody at the New York Times and a friend of mine, a partner, had been recently arrested and awaited trial for about a year and a half in a private prison in Northern Louisiana. And I really witnessed her become a single mother overnight. I also saw that she felt very isolated in terms of who she could talk to about how to move forward with her life. So I really thought about this film first, as being for the facilitation of conversations between women of different generations who could offer information to one another and be a source of support to one another. Even though that film took a slightly different direction, I contacted an organization called FLIC, (Friends and Families of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children) and Gina Womack who’s the Co-Founder and Director of that organization picked up. She said “the first person you have to speak with is Fox Rich.” A sliver of those conversations is still in the film, between her and Fox. Because she’s in ALONE briefly and makes a vivid connection between slavery and the prison industrial complex. I got to know her (Fox) in the process and I got to know her story. I thought it would be really important to try and think about how I could extend, in filmmaking, the conversation around incarceration from a place that was inherently from a black feminist point of view, from a familial point of view, (and) from a point of view that was about the effects of the facts.
One thing I found surprising is, that an underlying theme of the movie was hope. Was hope your mission? What did you want the viewer to take away from watching TIME?
That’s a question I ask everybody before I start working with them. It’s really important that there is a level of quality and agency on both sides when you’re making a film with somebody. It helps to establish what the intention is of the project. Once you can establish what the intention is between yourself and those you’re making the film with, that intention needs to stay intact all the way throughout the release of the film. When I asked Fox that same question she said, “Well I believe our story is the story of 2.3 million other American families. And our story can offer hope.” So hope is certainly something that we are hoping people can take away from the film. But I’d like to take it even a step further in saying that hope can be relatively abstract. Really what I mean is that love and unity, one’s ability to stay intact and in contact with those that they love, and one’s ability to maintain a sense of individuality within the system, (a system that’s intended to break you down and take you from yourself) are three very critical forms of resistance that no matter who you are, you can embrace and take on. So I’m hoping that people in the process of seeing this film, can be both comforted in what they can do, what they can continue to do, they can feel seen, and it can feel like food to them. Not just something that is speaking to those who don’t already know what’s happening.
I asked this same questions to Fox & Rob. If you could choose one person to see TIME, who has the power to implement sociopolitical change, who would it be and why?
Wow, that’s a really good question. There’s a couple of way of answering that. I think that it’s very hard for us to know who is behind the prison industrial complex, right? So racism is so deeply embedded and it is a part of the DNA of our country from the very beginning. So we can answer it from a very legislative standpoint. From a political standpoint. But I think as a filmmaker I’m really speaking to families. I’m speaking to people who are in this every single day and who have to find a way to have hope. I think Fox never doubted herself. There’s a complete lack of doubt, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that. The reason why it’s such a good question and also a very complicated one, is that we are individuals that are apart of a very complex and larger system. So in order for change to happen, both sides need to do the work. I’m really focused on everyday people. I’m hoping that this can offer something that is nourishing and that is helpful and that is generous to those who are immediately effected.
You have an exhibit premiering at MoMA in November and it’s centered around twelve short films in black & white. Just like TIME. Why black and white for your films?
There’s two answers to that question. AMERICA (2019 Documentary Short) is in black and white because from a conceptual standpoint, I really wanted to try to work within the constraints of the early 19th Century. Cinematic constraints of what was available to us. I wanted to work within those same parameters. So at that time there was only 35 mm film, there was only black and white. So that was an immediate parameter that I was able to jump into. And I think, I made that project over the course of almost 6 years. And I made many other works in the midst of that including ALONE (2017 Op-Doc) and partially TIME as well. And to be honest I was only seeing in black and white. There’s so many spectrums of color when we think about color. And there was just something for me . . . I couldn’t see it. When i was like, “Well if we made this in color, the question is what type of color? What Quality? What spectrum?” And the other part of my answer to that is, back in the day you had to shoot in black and white. I feel like cinema is still such a young medium and it (Color) is still considered an option to me not a standard. Color is still an option, not a standard. We don’t always have to have a sort of deep reason for it because we’re still in such early stages of the craft. In my opinion.
I really am impressed with how you mix everything together so seamlessly. You seem like the perfect mix of an artist and you don’t seem too defined by titles. You just blend mediums and make it work. What would you say to artists who feel boxed in by their craft? You seem to be doing it all.
Everyone kind of has the right to define themselves. I think part of the beauty of the world is self definition and self creation. For me, I’m not thinking so much about a genre or a market. I’m thinking about what I want to say and how I want to say it. Once I start letting those choices guide me, it really then just boils down to “How do I make this the best that it can be within the parameters of how I’m qualifying the best.” All the other labels and sort of genres that people want to apply to the work. I really leave that up to them.
Time is available to stream now on Prime Video.
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