I’m ecstatic to report that my son Jeff’s feature documentary “11/4/08” will have its World Premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March. The film is what he calls a participatory documentary, in that many people contributed footage from around the world, and the film will exist as an ongoing project in which anyone can still submit footage and create their own personal versions of the film.
Check out the trailer and Jeff’s op-ed piece, both now available exclusively available at Mediaite.com, a highly-trafficked news and media website.
Also, you can still participate in the film…
If you shot footage on 11/4/08, you can now upload it here!
If you took photos on 11/4/08, you can now upload them here!
If you didn’t shoot footage or take photos, you can still participate by browsing the footage in our screening library, downloading the raw footage, creating your own movie, and then uploading it here!
About 11/4/08
Two weeks before the election of Barack Obama, filmmaker Jeff Deutchman asked his friends around the world to record their experiences of 11/4/08, a day that had become “historic” before it had even taken place. In this vérité documentary, we see the results of that project: in St. Louis and Austin, idealistic volunteers think they can turn their states blue; in Chicago, voter lines are made even longer when Obama shows up to cast his own vote; in Alaska, children seem to be as invested in the election results as their parents; in Paris, an organization discusses whether there could ever be a black President of France; in Dubai, Berlin, Geneva and New Dehli, expatriates express their emotion from a distance; and in Harlem, a felon casts doubt on whether any of this will actually affect his life. As we approach the final announcement of Obama’s victory at 11pm EST, what emerges is a portrait of how people choose to live through “history”: the celebration of a new future remaining entangled with the universally visible tensions of the past.
The premiere of this documentary will coincide with the launch of a website that will mark the beginning of Phase Two: an effort to accumulate the most comprehensive collection of non-news footage shot on 11/4/08. The original version of the film will be updated on the website as a living document, but the footage will also be made available for users at home to edit their own versions of that day and then upload for all to see.