Filmmaker Austin Forbord is collaborating with choreographer Amie Dowling, Reggie Daniels, and Community Works to create Fathers and Sons, a dance/theater film that draws upon individual experiences and physical memories of a cast of formerly incarcerated men. The project explores ways that incarceration affects families for generations—specifically the impact of fathers’ incarceration on their sons.
The collaborating artists are developing initial material with the Artistic Ensemble at San Quentin Prison, a performance group composed of 20 men serving life sentences who have been making work with Amie Dowling since 2013. The performance group’s material, methods, structures, and stories will be further refined for the film with a cast composed of four formerly incarcerated men and their sons along with a movement “choir” of eight men and boys. Initial screenings of the finished work will be presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the University of San Francisco.
Austin Forbord is a video artist, filmmaker, and choreographer who has received numerous awards and honors, including an Emmy nomination and a 2013 Documentary of the Year award from the California Film Awards for Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco. Amie Dowling chairs the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department at the University of San Francisco. Reggie Daniels is a program director, case manager, and curriculum trainer for Community Works, which works to interrupt and heal the far-reaching impact of incarceration and violence through activities in jails and in the community, youth-led advocacy, and public exhibits and performances.