Michael Levine grew up in Jefferson Park, one of the first developments in West Windsor, when it was still surrounded by farmlands. By the time he was 10 years old, the houses on Conover Road and on South Mill Road were beginning to be built.
He is now filming a documentary 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.”
One of the recent West Windsor events was the razing of Lick-It, the landmark ice cream place next to Lucar Hardware, another landmark. “I arrived in town the day they tore it down,” he says. “The pile of rubble was hard to see.” As he told a reporter writing an article about suburban sprawl, his hometown has become “a mass of houses with no real identity. I could feel that there was a certain culture slipping away.”
Levine, a graduate of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, Class of 2000, graduated from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a degree in media studies. “I always had a bit of interest in films and with my present job [on the theater staff of the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York], I became re-interested in film.”
On the train from Pleasantville to Manhattan last July 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.
Last August they began filming a documentary, “Losing Ground,” about sprawl in New Jersey. Boling is the producer while Levine is directing it. By the fall, they had enough video and interviews for an edited 15-minute film. They are now receiving funding by a private investor (not a West Windsor resident) to do additional filming.
“I’ve always had an interest in documentaries but I don’t have a deep background,” he says. “I am astounded by the power a documentary can have on social change.”
“My family has been very supportive of the film,” he says. His 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.
“It’s been a lot of fun and a lot of work,” Levine says. “I enjoy living in the city and hanging out at farms.”
Now living in Manhattan, Levine works at the Jacob Burns Film Center in the educational program in visual literacy program for third grade students and above. His title is print traffic coordinator and programming assistant.
The sprawl documentary “includes a feature of two farmers talking about what it’s like to be in agriculture now — and 30 years ago. The question I like to ask is ‘How could things have been done differently?’”
“We are now filming constantly — every weekend and sometimes during the week,” he says. “We can see the end in sight and we would like to finish filming this fall and complete editing by next summer.” Last weekend he was filming at the West Windsor Farmers Market.
“We are always on the lookout for changes in West Windsor and appreciate interesting stories,” he says. Contact Levine at losinggroundmovie@yahoo.com.
