By CONNIE MEARS

Staff Writer

During the summer of love (that’s 1968 for you youngsters), Kevin Tomlinson was a teenager living in Port Madison on what was then a very rural Bainbridge Island. He remembers hanging with friends at a little family-owned cinema house on the south end of the island. He was cool, man.

In 1988, 20 years after Woodstock, after Jimi and Janice, Tomlinson was curious. Where had all the flower children gone? By this time, they were all past the dreaded age of 30.

At a “healing gathering” near rural Tonasket, Tomlinson videotaped a group of back-to-the-land hippies who had built lifestyles around the ideals of the 60s counter-culture.

But after watching the footage with friends, it seemed cliched, he said. Juxtaposed against the new 80s culture of disco, material excess, Reagonomics and cocaine, the hippies seemed trite relics of a long-gone fad. Bummer, dude.

Fast-forward another couple decades, and Tomlinson was by now an Emmy-winning, independent producer, director and cinematographer. His work had been seen on Dateline, The Today Show, Nightly News, 20/20, 60 Minutes and many more. Between projects he became interested in tracking down the people in the original footage to find out where they were, who they were, nearly 20 years later.

The resulting 70-minute documentary, “Back to the Garden,” will be showing this weekend at The Lynwood Theatre, the very one Tomlinson used to frequent as a kid. Which is, when you think about it, kind of groovy.

“It’s especially exciting,” Tomlinson said on the phone Wednesday on his way to Vancouver, B.C. for the Vancouver International Film Festival. His mother, Hazel Tomlinson, still lives on Bainbridge.

The film has been well-received along the indie circuit, playing at the Seattle, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Santa Fe Film Festivals.

It has also, to Tomlinson’s delight been well-received by a younger audience.

“I don’t want to just preach to the choir. Not just boomers, old hippies to be nostalgic,” Tomlinson said.

He thinks the film, and the hippies’ lifestyle, have information pertinent to current challenges.

“Now as we’re having to look at an economic meltdown, all having to come up with a new paradigm, we are reexamining our values. What do we really need to be happy?” he said.

For the subjects in the film, the idealism of the 60s wasn’t just a fad, he said. And he thinks, now, we might be ready to hear their message.

“I think we’re willing to embrace a more simple, trimmed-down lifestyle that isn’t filled with material goods,” he said. “There’s more to it than going to the mall.”

The hippie lifestyle didn’t go away, Tomlinson said. It went underground and has morphed into the green movement.

Tomlinson talked about the sense of community the group felt, the resilience they’d cultivated over decades of weathering tough circumstances together.

“They really were a tribal family,” Tomlinson said. And while the group didn’t live communally (most were within an hour of each other) they supported each other, bought food cooperatively, shared birthdays, music and gathered together on a regular basis.

Tomlinson was most impressed by the determination needed to survive – living on little money, with no credit cards, no health insurance, bartering and trading goods and services.

He also interviewed some of the now-grown children to find out what it was like to be raised by hippie parents. He said they were very grounded, smart and not afraid to take risks.

For more information about the film, visit www.backtothegardenfilm.com.

The showing of “Back to the Garden” is part of Sustainable Bainbridge’s Matinees that Matter series.

For more information, visit www.sustainablebainbridge.org.

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Back to the Garden

Kevin Tomlinson’s “Back to the Garden” airs at 5 p.m. Oct. 2 and 3 at The Historic Lynwood Theatre 4569 Lynwood Center Rd. Tickets: $9.

For more information, visit www.lynwoodtheatre.com