The Jungle
A film about a tennis court in Harlem.
New York | 2026 | 15 min
The Jungle, officially Frederick Johnson Playground, is a public tennis court in Harlem, named for the one-armed Black coach who first put a racquet in young Althea Gibson's hands. Generations later the ground still holds a community: coaches, players and neighbours who have made these courts a subculture the wider game overlooks.
Farhad Roshanaie, an Iranian-born coach, is one of them. This short documentary is a portrait of that community, and the man who found his belonging inside it.
An All Court Productions film about place, ritual and the people who keep a subculture alive.
Released September 2026.
Press enquiries: Adrian Calvert, Founder of All Court and Executive Producer, adrian@allcourt.club. Press pack, stills and a private screener on request.
- An All Court Production
- A Stirl and Rae Media Haus film
- Directed by
- Matt Clark
- Produced by
- Adrian Calvert
- Shot and edited by
- Stirl and Rae Media Haus
- Sound design
- Kevin Horton
- Graphics
- Milk Ritland
- With thanks
- The community of The Jungle, Frederick Johnson Playground Tennis Courts, Joshua Bey, Denzel Guillen, Sam Penceal, Fernando Perez, Richard Wolfe, Nathan Ziesche, Evette and Alejandro Zayas, Cakeburger
Featuring
Farhad Roshanaie
Farhad Roshanaie was Iran's No. 1 junior tennis player through his age brackets, and competed on the ITF Futures and Satellite tours between 1999 and 2003, never falling out of the country's men's top 10.
He left Tehran to study biomedical engineering at Germany's Technical University Ilmenau, coaching tennis alongside his degree; that engineering grounding still shapes his coaching, with a focus on the mechanics of movement. He moved to the United States in 2010, coached in Seattle, joined the Portland State Vikings women's tennis staff, and later held coaching roles at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
A USPTA Elite Professional and Eastern Section Tester, he trains other coaches for the region, and was named USPTA High School Coach of the Year in the Pacific Northwest. He now coaches every day at Harlem's Frederick Johnson Playground, and lives above his elderly Iranian neighbours in a Harlem brownstone. Tennis, for him, is the language he uses to belong.
Frederick Johnson Playground
Frederick Johnson Playground, known locally as The Jungle, is a public tennis court in Harlem. It's named for Frederick Johnson, a one-armed Black tennis coach who taught in the American Tennis Association era, at a time when Black players were barred from USTA competition. Johnson coached generations of Harlem players, including a young Althea Gibson before she became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam. His story, and the tennis culture that grew around him, is a foundational chapter of Black American tennis history.
Today the courts remain a hub for the neighbourhood's players: a subculture that runs on public asphalt, morning and evening, without gatekeepers or country-club membership.
Tennis journalist Steve Tignor featured the courts and their history in a 2016 piece for Tennis.com.
Production
Matt Clark
Matt Clark is a director, producer, cinematographer and photographer based in Penticton, British Columbia, where he leads Stirl and Rae Media Haus, a documentary and commercial production house founded in 2014. He raced as a professional triathlete from 2000 to 2008 and ran the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training programme across Western Canada before turning to film full time. His work stays with endurance sport and the people inside it. He directed Kikkan (2024), a portrait of the five-time Olympian Kikkan Randall, and Dirt Relations (2024), on British Columbia's Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program, which opened the 2024 Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival. The Jungle is his first film for All Court Productions.
Biographical notes provided by the production team.
- Kikkan (2024)
- Dirt Relations (2024)
- Choosing to Live
- Pasión de Grava: Colombia