The Garden

Scott Hamilton Kennedy

● Environment ● Politics
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After the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, community members in one of the country's most blighted urban areas in South Central Los Angeles created a fourteen-acre community garden. The garden flourished until 2004, when a combination of political and corporate forces threatened its continued existence. 

An Academy Award-nominated film, The Garden chronicles the battle for the country’s largest urban farm, covering backroom deals, land developers, green politics, money, poverty, power, and racial discord, and the urban farmers who organize, fight back, and demand answers. Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the L.A. City Council? Why was it never been made public?

With the pulse of verité and the narrative pull of fiction, The Garden explores and exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Scott started his career in music videos, making several internationally-aired videos including Jimmy Cliff’s remake of “I Can See Clearly Now.” As a director, Scott has worked with Showtime, CBS, AMC, Roger Corman, and Mattel.

His debut documentary, OT: our town, was short-listed for an Oscar nomination and was nominated for Best Documentary at the Independent Spirit Awards. OT also garnered rave reviews in its theatrical release.  

Scott is developing his narrative feature script Up River, an urban adventure movie set on the L.A. River, which went through the IFP/FIND Directors Lab. He is also in postproduction on a reality series entitled Fame High about students at the the L.A. County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).

Trailer:

Interview with Scott Hamilton Kennedy

t21: Are there certain universal themes that draw you?
SHK: I’m fascinated with underdog stories. And I love stories about looking at America from different angles, beyond clichés of what’s the ghetto, or what’s a poor neighborhood, or what’s a tough or dangerous neighborhood, or how we see a certain race or class, and seeing that in the end we’re probably a lot more similar than we are different.

t21: Did you think that your film could have an impact on what happened to the garden?
SHK: I may have had more of an influence if I had gotten the film out sooner. I had to wait till the film was over, and that’s where I’m more of a filmmaker than an activist. There are obviously strong political points of view in my film. But I didn’t set out to make the movie to save the garden; I set out tell the story of the people trying to save the garden. And those are two very different things.

t21: Did the story of the garden strike you as a very clear-cut situation of right vs. wrong?
SHK: I would say in the beginning there were elements of right vs. wrong, but even more interesting is there were elements of just questions. Who is right? And that’s intriguing.
The big right for me was it’s amazing that that garden is there at all. The garden was democracy in action, where local people from the neighborhood worked with the government to do something that was a form of healing for that neighborhood. Not a fix-all, not a cure-all, but a step…the farmers actually made that land happen. The city allowed them to be on it without paying rent, but they had to pay a little bit for water and for garbage, but the city didn’t give millions of dollars to bring farming experts in and soil experts in and donate sheets and equipment; the farmers did all that. It seemed like there was no upside to the garden dying, but at the same time, there were lots of gray areas.

t21: Do you feel as if you took sides in the film?
SHK: It’s pretty hard to say that I didn’t somewhat take sides with the farmers, but more importantly, I took the point of view of the farmers. Every moment is the film is truthful. I stand by any moment.

t21: I saw that you’re now working on a narrative adaptation of The Garden –
SHK: We’re definitely leaning more towards another way to tell the story, more than a follow up. I think it’s a fascinating portrait of Los Angeles, and the layers of social, racial, political, layers of Los Angeles that I haven’t seen. And right now I’m trying to adapt it into a TV series.

t21: Did the film change your view of Los Angeles?
SHK: That’s a good question. I grew up in Berkeley, lived in New York City for a long time. I had baggage and issues about comparing Los Angeles to the Bay Area and comparing it to New York City, which was better, which was cooler, less pretentious and all, and it took me a while to get past that and just like Los Angeles for itself.
My films have allowed me to fall in love with Los Angeles more because I have to spend time in neighborhoods that are off the beaten track of your everyday media. And even if they’re in the everyday media, you don’t see them from this angle. You see clichés like drive-bys, gang violence, crack crimes and stuff like that, but I see human beings trying to live their lives.

t21: Do you garden?
SHK: I get asked that one a lot. I love tomatoes, I’ve been on and off planting tomatoes and herbs and things like that. My dogs ate my tomatoes the last time and it was really bad for them. I haven’t found my green thumb yet.

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