Follow Me Down takes the viewer inside the experiences of inmate musicians with compelling visual footage, revealing interviews, and a powerful soundscape of prison. Much in the manner that John and Alan Lomax did in the 1930s, the film’s soundtrack combines and contrasts sounds of music with noises of prison.

The film’s narrative follows a diverse group of inmates at the three institutions from those who have been incarcerated a matter of hours to lifers, who have spent as many as 45 years behind bars. The film begins at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women with a profile of two very different new commits as they enter the institution. Music is important in both of their lives, and that importance becomes refigured in the setting of prison. One finds community, while the other leaves music behind, conforming to the institutional agenda of learning practical life skills but in doing so, losing the joy she found in singing. Next, at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, the film follows a heavy metal band as they plan and execute a yard show. This segment explores the lengths that inmates go to in order to play music. The film ends with portraits of what music means and has meant to inmates who have lived most of their lives behind bars and will likely never leave. Along the way, the film will feature uncut music from a gospel quartet, a women’s choir, rappers working in the fields, a metal band, a blind country singer, a jazz saxophonist, and an institutionally supported R&B band. Inmate commentary will reveal the different ways that music is meaningful behind bars and the challenges they face being musicians. Interviews from administrators and correctional officers help flesh out the bigger picture of prisons as places that are fundamentally about custody.

Produced and directed by Ben Harbert
Cinematography by John Slattery
Recording direction by Chauncy Godwin

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD.

A chronicle of an ordinary day of music-making at the medium security California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, In a Day's Time offers an alternate view of these men behind bars. The performances (from rap to ranchero to rock) are interlaced with interviews and conversations, and reveal on a very human level how music is an inner and outer mirror for lives full of regret and hope, loneliness and camaraderie, and opportunities yet to come.

In a Day's Time was shot in one day to show the vitality of musical activity in the California Men's Colony. What emerges are startling momentary connections with inmates as they discuss and perform music that they assume no one beyond prison walls will hear. Moving across three medium security yards, we meet charismatic musicians with a range of talents from endearing amateurs to seasoned troubadours. The film presents uncut music, offering the opportunity to visit a variety of inmate musical worlds.

Today's musical inmates work with limited resources and personnel, often creating original music styles. Their songs are born out of a necessity to connect with each other and poetically grapple with the situation of incarceration. For example, a white country guitar picker collaborates with a black R&B crooner to deliver a powerful song about freedom and mortality. A songwriting group develops a rap inspired by Shakespearean themes about having artistic dreams given the reality of living on the streets. (32 min.)

Produced, directed and edited by Ben Harbert

A companion DVD for Anthony Seeger’s Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. The film documents the annual two-week long celebration of a boy’s initiation into his name set by the Suya people of central Amazon.

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Director/Producer: Anthony Seeger
Editor: Ben Harbert

A film introducing the Chinese qin, featuring scholar Bell Yung.

Director/Editor: Helen Rees
Director of Photography: Ben Harbert

John (Ivan) Filcich, the Croat in ethnic background, devoted his life to the preservation and promotion of musical traditions and dances of many ethnic groups in California. Filcich has been a music seller and record producer catering to ethnic communities in California for nearly sixty years. Since 1947, he has been a folk dancer, and then a teacher to the international folk dance community in California, and he was a founder of that community’s Kolo Festival.

In this documentary film John (Ivan) Filcich is portrayed as a treasure trove of knowledge and an invaluable source of information and documentation for all those fascinated by the musical and dance life of California’s ethnic groups in the second half of the 20th century. The film exposes Filcich’s vivid memories; his vibrant but modest personality; his warm, expressive way of presenting knowledge of oral cultural history of California; the caring way he shares music, dances, costumes, and information, and it documents his long-lasting relationship with Machvaya Gypsies, and his knowledge of their changing lifestyle within California’s multi-ethnic urban settings. (29 min.)

Director: Ankica Petrovic
Producer/Editor: Ben Harbert