Evan Bode & Marvin Wade
directors of Prison & Time

Program 2 | Experience Tells Us | Friday, April 24 | 8:30pm

Marvin Wade is a Spiritual Activist and family man, born and raised In Brooklyn, NY. Marvin joined the Re/Creation Bed-Stuy writing workshop in 2019, after participating in a writing class being held in Queensboro correctional facility by Professor Joni Schwartz and joining the group upon his release after 25 years. While incarcerated, Marvin wrote multiple books worth of stories, novels, and personal essays on every bit of paper he could find, combining his gift as a storyteller with the art of writing. As part of the Re/Creation collective, Marvin has had numerous Dispatches that he's written appear on the website, titles that include "The Conditioned State of America" to "Time and Prison, Are They Mutually Exclusive?" His poem “Where I’m From” is featured in Voices of Fortune 2020 literary magazine. Marvin also took part in the "We Choose to Bloom" film, a joint venture between Fortune Society and MOMA. Look for many great things both literary and spiritual to come from Mr. Marvin Wade. 

Evan Bode is an award-winning experimental animator, independent filmmaker, mixed media artist, music composer, film editor, and arts educator. Their work has been celebrated at major film festivals across the United States and around the world.  Embracing colorful, theatrical, handcrafted / DIY modes of production, Evan’s short films merge live-action filmmaking with animation and original music. Their original style of storytelling breaks binaries through a playful mix of mediums, departing from realism and blurring the distinction between outer worlds and inner ones.  

Evan, who uses any/all pronouns, approaches filmmaking as a personal language to disrupt socially constructed boxes and borders. Their antifascist parables explore themes related to queer gender identity, neurodivergence, and imaginative creative expression as resistance to oppressive norms. 

Evan’s animated rendition of Marvin’s essay, “Prison and Time, Are They Mutually Exclusive?” explores themes of self expression, growth, and individualism while commenting on and discussing the issues of the American criminal legal system.

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Alex Turner, WOEFF: How did you and Marvin meet and come together to create this film? 

Evan Bode: We met each other because of Patrick Berry, who is a professor at Syracuse University. He has a really incredible journal that's called Project Mend. Project Mend publishes essays and poems and writings by people who have been impacted by the criminal legal system. Marvin's essay was one of the pieces in the Project Mend Journal. Patrick Berry brought us together. He had talked to me about it. He thought it would be cool to bring animation to one of the pieces. He gave me a few options, and Marvin's piece really stood out to me so I chose that one. I think we met in person for another Mend event and at that point I had made a one minute kind of sample and Marvin really liked it. I kept working and that's kind of how the process got started.  

AT: What moment allowed you to make the distinction between prison and time, and how did that kind of change your perception?  

Marvin Wade: So, I would hear people say over time, prison saved me, meanwhile, while we're there, you know, we're fighting against the system to try to get home and the system's not helping us. They're doing everything to destroy our family connection, our education, everything that we're trying to do to better ourselves. One day I was in a writing class, and heard it again, a fellow writer was like, If it wasn't for prison, you know, prison saved him, and in that moment, it just, hit me; It wasn't prison, man, it was time. Prison was just a space, but the time held you captive in the moment to be able to achieve the things we did. The system worked against that, it was just a time within the space that allowed us to slow things down, and see value in ourselves. The system and prison was trying to devalue us. Prison wasn't the reason why you are the person that you are, you utilized the time that you had within this hellhole to make yourself better, to grow, and to connect with your family.  

AT: How did you go about approaching the stylistic and thematic elements of the animation to capture that contrast between the place versus the time period and what grew out of that place?  

EB: I think that distinction that Marvin was just talking about is so important, his growth and transformation that he talks about was not because of prison, it was actually in spite of prison, working against him at every turn. And so I wanted to make a clear difference in the animation. to separate those things. I tended to be drawn toward natural imagery of plants growing, the tree growing to represent growth, and then prison was the exact opposite of that. So I was drawing these very unnatural structures with harsh lines and shadows and things that felt like this growth. was actually in opposition to the environment. It's like a plant growing in an environment that's not meant to nurture plants, that's not meant to protect life and growth. It's actually working against it. And yet, life is persisting because of this element of time and befriending time. You know it's like it's an experience that's outside of my own life experience, it's someone else's story. So his writing is kind of a gift to be able to get a window into his experience and his message that he has for other people. So I saw everything I was doing as just being in service to that message that he's already written, and I could take that message and just add a visual element to his work.  

AT: What do you think is the best place to start when tackling the clear need for prison reform?  

MW: Well, definitely the structure itself, for me, changing the structure, and changing the environment inside, the mentality of some of the officers there because they're caught up in the system as well, that conditioning and way of life that they've been bred to not see prisoners as human beings. Create a space where people can make bad decisions in their life, and they can go to a place and heal naturally and grow naturally and not be abused and kept away from their family. There's a lot of unnatural things that the system allows to take place and pushes. It just creates a distortion of reality and for a lot of people, if they don't take advantage of that time and stay grounded with the right people, and come home and also connect with the right people, they end up coming back. And that's what the system wants. 

I wish they could develop and build a space where people can grow in a healthy environment, because a lot of guys don't survive. The system is too vicious and too strong and destroys them. So, if there could be a space where people can grow, and heal, and get healthy, within a nice time frame without a distorted reality. The way the system does it is more of a breakdown of the spirit and humanity. I was fortunate to be around people to help me grow spiritually, you know, eat right, writing was therapeutic for me, surrounding myself with people that wanted to grow and get healthy. Dealing with officers that were healthy and able to put me in spaces where I could grow and and just be positive on the inside and pull people along and help them find a path to being positive and growing.   

EB: And I just want to add, just the importance of  listening to people who have had direct experience with incarceration and have the wisdom like Marvin does. He knows what it's like and can speak to it, instead of listening to the people in power who actually profit from the system, the way it is now. We have to uplift the voices of people who've been impacted directly by that system. And I think that's part of the work that Project Mend does. Prisons make people invisible and disappear them from the public eye, um, which is deeply harmful.  

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AT: So what do you think is the best way to get people to realize that they do have the time to undergo these personal growth journeys before they're put in a situation where they either can or can’t?  

MW: I try to talk to a lot of the youth and get them to understand that you're gonna have moments in your life, and in those moments, make the right decision. Slow things down, understand that you have time, because a lot of times we don't feel like we have time, especially the black youth. A lot of young black men feel like they are rushing through life so I try to let them understand that you have value, and you have time. You just have to just slow things down and recognize those certain moments in your life and try to make the right decision and understand that you have time. Allow that to be your mantra when you walk and when you wake. That's what I do every day, just remember, remind myself, regardless of what other people say, what society says, that I have time. Just believe in yourself, believe in your time, and trust in it. Time is your friend, not an enemy or somebody you’re racing against or you're trying to catch up to.  

EB: Yeah, I think that message is just so important, that's kind of part of what drew me to the piece is hearing those words, hearing that message, and also knowing how impactful that can be for young people to hear. It just takes one mentor, one role model, one person sharing their story that can make a huge difference in someone's life who really needs to hear that. And I think Marvin's spent a lot of time thinking about these things and really has arrived at some powerful conclusions that have the potential to make a lot of difference for young people. I've done some work with teens in the community with a filmmaking program, and just the power of creativity is something that resonates with both Marvin and I in terms of art as an outlet for expressing oneself, and healing and tending to one's mental health. So sharing that with young people as well, creativity participates in art of many different kinds, whether it's writing or poetry or filmmaking, or something else. Creativity can also be a powerful way to tell people that they matter, their voices matter, that they have things to say in the world.  

AT: What was the hardest obstacle when approaching such a deep and personal project as a filmmaker?  

EB: Yeah, I think because I cared about the work and the piece I was nervous about the responsibility of conveying this story, because it's a vulnerable thing for Marvin to trust me as another artist with his personal story. And so I think the obstaclewas my self doubt of, oh am I able to do this piece justice? I think it really helped that it wasn't me taking over someone else's story. Marvin is telling his story, his voice is the one that's carrying the piece, so I was just trying to do my best to contribute to that in conversation with the piece. Almost like a musical score where the visuals aren't taking center stage, instead conveying my own kind of personal interpretation along with the story, which is the center of the piece. 

AT: What made you want to reveal Marvin at the end rather than just leaving him as an unknown narrator? 

EB: That's a great question, I think it's one of the best moments in the piece that you actually see the human face behind the voice at the end. And I think that goes back to what we were talking about in terms of visibility. Prison disappears people and doesn't want to give them a spotlight or a face or a human identity. So I think working with Marvin's voice, I felt like it was also important to show Marvin for a human connection. We connect with human faces and that way he was part of the piece himself. Not only his voice, words, and story, but also him as a performer and as a speaker, because he's a really powerful speaker. It’s just another way to connect with the audience. I think finding as many ways as we can to reach out and feel this is a human story that we're connecting with. And that was kind of the same thought with the part where I zoom out to show my process of working. I think throughout the animation, you can kind of feel that there's a person who's making the animation. It's not just this polished, machine produced aesthetic, but it's a very hand-drawn/handmade thing. So just always remembering the person and the human behind the art, behind the writing, was important to me as I was approaching it.  

AT: What is your favorite moment or shot of the short film?  

MW: I always tell Evan the part where Evan the trees are sprouting. It was hurtful when the lightning struck and burnt down the tree because that's how it felt a lot of times. You know, you're growing and you're maturing and you're getting somewhere and then boom, an officer might strike you down, or you hear some bad news, or you won't be let out of your cell to go to a class or something like that. So, I thought that the visual of that was very like… it reminded me of the time, just in that. So that part really hit me. Evan did a great job, man. To give my piece light and life, that was terrific. I was like wow, everybody that watched it, family and friends, you know, so the visuals were just great. But that part really hit me.  

EB: Yeah, that's the part I'm most proud of too. I think partly because it resonates with Marvin and resonates with people who watch it. I think arriving at this idea of a tree, it's stuck in one place, it's rooted, and yet it's still growing and it's still changing and transforming. And the environment, like I mentioned before, is so inhospitable to life and growth that these themes and Marvin's writing just kind of came together all in that image and that moment. So definitely proud of that. I think in general, the way that you can feel time through the piece helps a lot by drawing our attention to the theme of time that's in the work and that we're spending our time, you know, watching the work and thinking about it. 

AT: Do you have a final message? 

MW: Again, it all just goes back to needing to understand your value and your value of life and the value of other people in your life. Just slow things down and understand you have time, you don't have to put everything and force everything all in that one moment. Sometimes it takes people coming together to try to get people to understand the value of themselves and the value of time. Just understand that if you're rushing and you're trying to get everything done, it's just not going to work that way. You're going to take on too much, it's like trying to carry something and run and rush through it. Change your belief system, get back to reality and believe in yourselves, man. Believe in time, take advantage of it. Not racing with it and/or trying to catch it. Like I said, just walk with it.