Michael Levine grew up in Jefferson park, one of West Windsor’s oldest developments, and watched as the farms around him were replaced by massive housing developments.
Now a screenwriter, Levine has made an 85-minute film about the subject called “Losing Ground,” which fosuses on the loss of farmland in New Jersey. The film will be screened at the Historical Society of West Windsor’s Schenck House, one of the last bastions of West Windsor open space, on Monday, May 7.##M:[more]##
Levine is a graduate of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, Class of 2000, and New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a degree in media studies.
“There is plenty of West Windsor footage in the film,” says Levine, who filmed at the West Windsor Farmers’ Market in the summer of 2005. Levine also interviewed farmers, environmental groups, and residents throughout New Jersey.
Levine grew up in Jefferson Park when it was still surrounded by farmlands, but by the time he was 10, housing development on nearby Conover and South Mill roads were beginning to be built.
His documentary is about sprawl in an agricultural community. “Sprawl has always been an issue with me,” he says. “Jefferson Park was built over a farm and was surrounded by farms — I watched it change.”
During his early years, the population of West Windsor doubled. “When I was in third grade (at Maurice Hawk School) the teacher asked who was born in West Windsor and I was one of only two kids who raised their hands.”
Levine’s parents moved here in 1968 when his father, Peter, an electrical engineer, began working at Sarnoff. His mother, Brigitte, is a homemaker. Steve, his older brother, graduated from WW-PHS in 1990.
He felt that his hometown has become “a mass of houses with no real identity and I could feel that there was a certain culture slipping away,” he says. “I arrived in town the day they tore Lick-It down, and the pile of rubble was hard to see.”
Now living in Manhattan, Levine, who worked at the Jacob Burns Film Center in the educational program in visual literacy program for third grade students and above, is now a freelance film editor. “Filming has been a lot of fun and a lot of work,” Levine said in 2005. “I enjoyed living in the city and hanging out at farms.”
He always had a bit of interest in films and with his former job he became re-interested in film. On the train from Pleasantville to Manhattan in 2004 he met Alexis Boling and they began to compare notes on sprawl. Boling, the director of Hamonium Films and Music, was born in Athens, Georgia, and watched the same thing happen in his area. He became interested in Levine’s project, supplied the equipment, and is the co-producer of “Losing Ground.” They later received funding by a private investor (not a West Windsor resident) to do additional filming.
Levine, who is now pursuing filmmaking full time, has been doing freelance shooting and editing work for A&E, the History Channel, and a number of other places. “I’ve also been shooting and co-producing a film for another director in Brooklyn — a documentary that chronicles the first year of existence of a new arts and media-concentrated inner-city public school that is part of the small schools movement — definitely a very different experience from shooting on farms in New Jersey, but very rewarding as well.”
He is also planning another documentary — this one about the pine barrens. “I’m just fascinated by the idea of a place that is so completely surrounded by urbanization, and the homogeny of modern American life, and yet manages to maintain, at least to some degree, a culture that is very separate from that,” he says. “If such a culture exists, what can we learn from it, and if it’s just our perception, why do we seem to want to imagine that such a place exists?”
“Losing Ground” was shown in Salem County last October. “I’ve always had an interest in documentaries but I don’t have a deep background,” Levine told the News (August, 2005). “I am astounded by the power a documentary can have on social change.” When Congressman Rush Holt learned of the film, he invited Levine to screen it at the Library of Congress. “It was a a fantastic experience, and wonderful to have an opportunity to show the film to a group that is so deeply involved in the issues it addresses,” says Levine.
“I have known about the film from when Michael first began to work on it,” says Donna Munde, vice president of the historical society, and a neighbor of the Levine family, who still live on Dunbar Drive. “Since its subject is the demise of farms in New Jersey, and since West Windsor was once a farming community, it seemed appropriate to show it.”
“We recently held a small rough-cut screening in New York City, which led to interest from a literary agency in having me turn the film into a book — definitely a surprise, but a very welcome one,” says Levine, who will be at the West Windsor screening.
— Lynn Miller
Losing Ground, Historical Society of West Windsor, Schenck House, 50 Southfield Road, West Windsor, 609-799-1278. Monday, May 7, 7:30 p.m.
