Gar­rett Bradley: ​‘It’s impor­tant to resist the invis­i­bil­i­ty of the prison indus­tri­al complex’

Whether train­ing her cam­era on the ​“click-farms” of Bangladesh (Like), the dis­as­ter edu­ca­tion cen­tres of Japan (The Earth is Hum­ming), or the fam­i­lies and loved ones per­ma­nent­ly affect­ed by the prison indus­tri­al com­plex in the Unit­ed States (Alone, Time), Gar­rett Bradley’s work bears a rare self-awareness.

Regard­less of how close she gets to her sub­jects, she recog­nis­es her­self as an out­sider. In Time, she por­trays the lives of Fox Rich and her sons as they fight to get her hus­band and their father out of his 60 year sen­tence in Louisiana’s Ango­la Prison. Through stylised com­po­si­tions and edit­ing, she stress­es the real­i­ty of their heroism.

LWLies: Your use of zooms con­cedes the camera’s sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. What does this tech­nique mean for you in rela­tion to documentaries?

Bradley: My first fea­ture-length film, Below Dreams, was all hand­held. We were work­ing on prime lens­es, some Zeiss Super Speeds, and I was very inter­est­ed in the cam­era mim­ic­k­ing our own phys­i­cal­i­ty and mode of obser­va­tion. There are dif­fer­ent ways you can do that and I think that hand­held felt like an intu­itive way to, start­ing off, because so much of that film is about move­ment and mov­ing through the city. I start­ed work­ing with zooms short­ly after that film because I found them to be an equal­ly illus­tra­tive way of mim­ic­k­ing our own phys­i­cal­i­ty as view­ers in space.

The zoom offers you a wide space. It gives you con­text and it also gives you speci­fici­ty, all with­in the same scene or the same frame. I’ve always described it as being sim­i­lar to the way con­cen­tra­tion feels. Your eyes are mov­ing around when you’re talk­ing to some­body, or engag­ing with some­thing, then at a cer­tain point you start to rest and focus in and relax on one thing. Yes, it maybe has this sort of med­i­ta­tive, dra­mat­ic qual­i­ty, but for me it’s com­ing more from how our mind and mode of con­cen­tra­tion actu­al­ly works in the real world.

The cam­era often looks up at Fox Richard­son from low cant­ed angles. Does this also mim­ic the way we con­cen­trate, as you say?

It’s dif­fer­ent actu­al­ly but it has sim­i­lar inten­tions. It does mim­ic the con­cen­tra­tion of inter­nal and exter­nal space but the oth­er [inten­tion] is that it’s pro­pa­gan­da, if you will. It’s ele­vat­ing peo­ple and mak­ing them heroes. Think­ing about cin­e­matog­ra­phy as mak­ing con­tem­po­rary iconog­ra­phy and sym­bol­ism. So the low Dutch angle is sort of the quin­tes­sen­tial, hero­ic lead­er­ship image that I’ve used a lot in my work with every­day peo­ple. And I think the sym­bol­ism around that is self explanatory.

Was your idea to let Fox sculpt her own por­tray­al, or were there moments where you had to step back from that?

In doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing there’s always that con­ver­sa­tion about to what extent the direc­tor is inti­mate­ly involved in people’s lives and what the role of objec­tiv­i­ty and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty plays in that rela­tion­ship. For me, it’s nev­er been that com­pli­cat­ed. I work with peo­ple who I respect, and respect allows there to be a full see­ing of the holis­tic nature of human beings that is both sub­jec­tive and objec­tive all at once. It’s no dif­fer­ent than the way most of us move through the world. There are bound­aries, you know? But I think that there’s room for both in that space.

When Fox and her sons give their def­i­n­i­tions of time in voiceover, their deliv­ery almost feels ele­vat­ed. Were you ask­ing them to respond in a par­tic­u­lar way?

I just asked them real­ly open end­ed ques­tions. This is why I’m uncom­fort­able with the idea of even titling a film, because it cre­ates some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly defin­i­tive and I’m not real­ly inter­est­ed in that. I’m not inter­est­ed in mak­ing state­ments, I’m more inter­est­ed in the flex­i­bil­i­ty of ideas, pos­si­bil­i­ties and def­i­n­i­tions of things. So there was noth­ing real­ly spe­cial that I did. I think peo­ple respond to your ener­gy. I tried to set a tone for every­body, the cam­er­ap­er­son, the per­son who might do voiceover. I try to emu­late or evoke the emo­tion that I’m look­ing for just through my own behav­iour. But there was no spe­cial some­thing. I think every­one is just nat­u­ral­ly poet­ic and bril­liant on their own.

Can you talk about the impor­tance of shoot­ing doc­u­men­taries with a diverse team behind the camera?

Diver­si­ty is not for the sake of being polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect. Film­mak­ing is about per­spec­tive. We can tell the same sto­ry over and over again; what makes it spe­cial is the per­spec­tive from which it’s being told, and how that can be seen and expe­ri­enced as some­thing that helps us under­stand our­selves and our cul­ture. Diver­si­fi­ca­tion of per­spec­tive actu­al­ly push­es the medi­um for­ward, which is so much more mean­ing­ful than any­thing else. I hap­pen to know peo­ple that are smart and have strong per­spec­tives and believe in mine and can push it for­ward in a col­lab­o­ra­tive way. I think film­mak­ers, or any­one who is hir­ing a crew, should be think­ing about it in terms of how they’re going to make the work bet­ter, not because they think they have to.

Can you talk about the drone shots of Ango­la Prison that you weave through the narrative?

Part of what has allowed the prison indus­tri­al com­plex to become so pro­found in our coun­try is its appar­ent invis­i­bil­i­ty, its resis­tance to being seen, or being caught. Ango­la [Prison], which is where Robert served time for 21 years, was a for­mer plan­ta­tion which turned into what the prison is now. It’s 18,000 acres of land. It was very dif­fi­cult for even a drone to cap­ture the mag­ni­tude of that, which speaks to why it’s impor­tant, in a film like this, to cre­ate that vis­i­bil­i­ty. It’s offer­ing, also, an opti­cal solu­tion to resist­ing that invis­i­bil­i­ty through under­stand­ing the effects it has on the fam­i­ly. So the few scenes we have of Ango­la real­ly don’t do ser­vice to the mag­ni­tude of what it is. But it was, in one way, attempt­ing to address the era­sure of this experience.

The cam­era was the only device through which Fox and her sons could say some­thing to their father dur­ing his incar­cer­a­tion. Did know­ing that affect your approach to film­ing them?

Their moth­er was the one show­ing them how to see and live through the world with the cam­era. In this case, I was an out­sider. I was not some­one that was part of their fam­i­ly. I think a lot of the cam­er­a­work and their rela­tion­ship to the cam­era was just trust build­ing, and a lot of that trust went through Fox. As long as Fox was com­fort­able to a cer­tain extent, it real­ly helped with how we want­ed to move with the cam­era and what their rela­tion­ship was to our camera.

How did you decide what to show and not show of Fox’s family?

I want­ed peo­ple to under­stand how the sys­tem unequiv­o­cal­ly finds itself immersed in every ele­ment of a person’s life, their work life, their fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, and their per­son­al time. Also, I was try­ing to show the ways in which this fam­i­ly resist­ed the sep­a­ra­tion, the his­tor­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion, the sys­tem­at­ic sep­a­ra­tion of fam­i­lies through their own uni­ty as indi­vid­u­als and love for one another.

Time is avail­able to watch on Ama­zon Prime from 16 Octo­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.