Filmmaker Marc Levin's Work Follows Themes Grounded In Maplewood

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — As many film projects as filmmaker Marc Levin has produced during his career, the impactful cultural thread that runs throughout them is unmistakable.

But the roots of the social justice themes that have come to become a staple of Levin’s work can be traced back to Maplewood’s Columbia High School, where the son of a filmmaker spent his formative years at a time that not only informed him, but left also him with an ideology he has carried for more than 50 years.

This week, Levin will see three new film projects drop at once, all of which were either completed or were filmed at a time when the production industry was affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. All three films will make their debut at the DOCNYC, a documentary film festival that showcases the work of creators such as Levin and that is part of the comeback not only of New York City, but of creative endeavors that took a unique path to completion due to the pandemic.

Although the three projects all produced by Levin's Blowback Productions— “Kevin Garnett: Anything Is Possible” (Showtime), “The Slow Hustle” (HBO) and “Adrienne” (HBO) — follow different storylines, each has a very identifiable commonality that has served Levin well throughout his filmmaking career.

While Levin’s love of basketball is grounded at Columbia High, where he played three years and co-captained the school’s boys basketball team his senior year, other indelible lessons have stuck with him from his time growing up in Maplewood that have provided him with a unique lens to the world.

The timing of his time at Columbia was centered around the Vietnam War and at a time when young people were learning to find their voice. For Levin, whose father, Al and mother, were both civil rights activists, watching what was happening in the world affected not only his perspective, but also provided a foundation for what would be his life’s work.

“There was just a huge eruption of social change that young people were in the vanguard of,” Levin told Patch in a phone interview on Monday. “…It was a cauldron of change and that has stayed with me. The battle, which we’re which still fighting, this culture war – that’s when it started. And so trying to make sense of that, trying to not accept some of the kind of pundit-class versions of what that was really all about in the 60s…that has been the driving theme of my work and I think it all started percolating in Columbia High School, in Maplewood.”

Although Maplewood was considered an affluent community, Levin said his experiences of playing basketball in places like South and East Orange and Newark opened his eyes to a different way of seeing the world. When he started at Columbia in 1967, boys weren’t allowed to wear jeans or have long hair, girls wore skirts to classes. But by the time he graduated, norms had changed and so had the world in meaningful ways, Levin said.

By traveling to different communities to play basketball, Levin says he developed a view of the race culture in ways he would not have had he grown up elsewhere. Through those games played in neighborhood communities, Levin was introduced to Black consciousness and the idea of how people from different cultures relate to one another along with introducing Levin to the racial inequalities that continue to this day.

Levin also served as the executive producer of “I Promise”, which chronicles the opening of a school in Akron, Ohio by NBA megastar LeBron James and which was recently made into a feature-length film for YouTube. The two basketball-related films hold a special place for Levin, given his ties to Columbia’s boys team in the late 1960s.

But Columbia was also the setting for Levin to begin his filmmaking career as he remembers running around the school with a 16mm camera, which allowed the convergence of his love of film and basketball came to blossom. The Kevin Garnett project allowed Levin to work with his son, Daniel, who, like his father and grandfather has picked up the filmmaking mantle in a way that has become special for Marc Levin.

Al and Marc Levin worked together for many years, beginning in Maplewood where Al brought his Brooklyn style of street basketball to Memorial Park, Marc Levin said. Levin’s parents lived in Maplewood for more than 40 years. Like Marc, Al Levin’s love of basketball was undeniable, which extended the bond that already connected father and son over filmmaking. Levin now shares similar experiences with Daniel, who is the director of the Garnett documentary, but who may have a slightly different experience than his father had with his own father.

“None of my friends had their old man down at Memorial Park for pick-up basketball games,” Marc Levin said Monday. “He was used to a rougher street ball, and he was elbowing people and knocking people over and my friends were like, ‘Your old man is going to get in a fight, man. You better quiet him down.”

“So he passed onto me just by being who he was….and it was just about being in his presence…and it was really organic and that’s how it’s been with my son.”

The three projects that drop this week all share a strong connection to social justice movements and other timely themes. The Kevin Garnett project traces the former NBA’s roots back to growing up the middle of a gang war on Chicago’s West Side after Garnett found trouble in South Carolina.

“The Slow Hustle” deals with police violence and corruption in departments across the country and the mistrust that exists people communities of color and law enforcement. The LeBron James also deals with how the Los Angeles Lakers star has founded a school for disadvantaged students in his hometown of Akron, which highlights another issue that exists throughout the United States.

The third project "Adrienne" chronicles the life of Adrienne Shelly, a New York City rising star in the independent film world who wrote, directed and co-starred in "Waitress", which was love letter written to her unborn child, Sophie. The film takes a look at her murder that was first considered a suicide that also looks at themes of grief and forgiveness.

Despite the common threads, all three projects are also aa connector back in time for Levin, who said his experience of growing up in Maplewood comes shining through five decades after he lived through what he did as a teenager. And to be able to connect the present with the past, Levin said, is something that makes the release of the three films this week even more special.

“I can trace it back to being a child of the 60’s – sex, drugs and rock and roll – and some of the first losses I experienced as a kid,” said Levin, who lost two childhood friends to early deaths. “So I think those traumas and coming of age stayed with me.”