Sibil Fox Richardson and Robert Richardson were young newlywed parents in love in 1997 when they snuck a kiss during a car ride as her camcorder rolled on the dashboard, preserving in grainy image the kind of fleeting everyday moment most of us take for granted. Now etched in black and white in the new documentary “Time” from director Garrett Bradley, the moment is both memory and promise, a quiet gesture made epic and totemic by the decades of heartache that followed.
That’s because six months after that day, the world came crashing down on the Richardsons, who now go by Fox and Rob G. Rich, when the Shreveport, Louisiana, couple took part in a botched bank robbery that sent both of them and their nephew to prison.
Released after serving 3 1/2 years behind bars, Fox set out to keep their young family together and began the long and arduous fight to bring her husband home. Raising their six sons with the help of her mother, she rebuilt her life, working to keep Rob’s memory present as he served a 60-year sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. And for the next two decades, as she fought steadfastly for his freedom, she kept picking up her camera to film precious moments for him to see one day.
“To continue filming was a form of resistance — to say, ‘We messed that up, but we can fix it, and we’re going to. And we’re going to stay diligent about it until we get it fixed,'” said Fox, whose story and personal archives provide the beating heart of “Time,” which is now streaming on Amazon. “I wanted to make sure that he would not be forgotten, which is what prison does to families. It takes human beings. It tucks them away and hides them from the rest of the world, and that was not going to happen to my family.”