11/4/08

Documentary Feature, Emerging Visions
D: Jeff Deutchman

A year and a half later, the worldwide hope generated by the election of President Barack Obama has long since painfully collided into the discouraging pragmatism of governance. It’s difficult to recall the international euphoria sparked by the possibility of momentous change, and this “participatory documentary” – still in progress on the film’s website – attempts to fill the gap, recalling Depression-era efforts at full-day documentation. “I was curious to see what history looked like,” said Deutchman at Saturday’s world premiere, describing himself as “curator and editor” of the election-day films shot by more than two dozen “directors” in more than a dozen cities, from Homer, Alaska, to New Delhi and back again. (Austinite Thomas Humphreys was among those seeing their recast footage for the first time.) Beginning at dawn with Obama’s Hyde Park polling place and through the entire night, the film frenetically records an instantaneous world reaction to a single momentous occasion.

Friday, March 19, 5pm, G-Tech

This article appears in March 19 • 2010.

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Contributing writer and former news editor Michael King has reported on city and state politics for the Chronicle since 2000. He was educated at Indiana University and Yale, and from 1977 to 1985 taught at UT-Austin. He has been the editor of the Houston Press and The Texas Observer, and has reported and written widely on education, politics, and cultural subjects.