A Film About Crossing Boundaries in Search of a Less Imperfect Union

Ian Cheney is one of my favorite filmmakers and I can’t wait to see the new one

Here’s the trailer to “The Work in Progress,” the latest film directed by Ian Cheney, an imaginative, eclectic, solution-oriented documentary maker living here in Maine:

In a post on his Wicked Delicate Substack, Cheney explains his documentary, which premieres in New York City on September 4th, kicking off a nation-spanning tour (that you can explore here):

With my wonderful colleagues I have made a film - called The Work in Progress - about the need for us to sit down with each other, in person, and listen. We made it on the occasion of America’s 250th birthday, not a bad occasion to peer at our polity and wonder how we’re doing on the grand experiment of democracy. But the bigger occasion is not a birthday, it’s an epoch of inattentiveness and social media addiction. The bigger context is digital: we’ve become a people who interact principally online. The film - I think, I hope - suggests that we can readily do better.

The irony is that the very technologies that are destroying our ability to listen to one another are the best strategies for telling people to see our film about listening to one another.

Needless to say, all of this resonates with me (and I’m sure with many Sustain What longtimers) given how much I’ve focused on paths past the polarization and factionalism surrounding a host of tough issues, from climate change to the pandemic to sustaining democracy. See some examples at the bottom of the post and here.

Scenes from The Work in Progress. The cards are prompts for conversations among strangers.

In his post, Cheney explains why he mostly lives and works offline, but he’s getting a lot of help from the film’s executive producer and interview subject, some influencer named Robert Reich. Here’s a quick exchange on the film with Cheney, Reich and Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (which Reich co-founded and which, with partners, is behind the film and focuses on storytelling for civic engagement):

Reich posted this note about the film:

The film brings together 100 strangers from across generations and geographies to ask where they think America is going.

Watching this film will fill you with hope and make you rethink your assumptions about this country and the many different types of people who live here. From a pig farmer in Iowa and a blues musician in his barber shop in Alabama to the first-ever Hawaiian woman fishing boat captain and a rabbi and priest meeting in Chicago, the people featured in conversation in this film are honest, raw, and curious. (Perhaps you’ve seen some of Ian Cheney’s other films such as, King Corn, The Search for General Tso, and The Most Unknown.)

I’m sharing this with you because I believe in the power of empathy, the potential of this country to fix what is broken, and the need for us all to begin talking and listening to each other once again.

Here’s some context from the Sustain What archives:

Here’s my 2021 Sustain What show with Carnegie Mellon philosopher Andy Norman; solution-focused journalist Amanda Ripley; Columbia University psychologist and conflict dissector Peter Coleman, and songwriter and storyteller Reggie Harris:

And of course several of my songs deal with crossing boundaries and getting away from screens as a way to getting comfortable with differences. “Good News from 2044” on my new album starts by proposing America gets it right in that presidential election year because a solar storm destroyed social media.

But then I flip and say, “Of course that is a dream. The sun won’t set us straight. It’ll take a lot of work to make our country great again, again. Join yourself a club or the PTA. Even run for office if you feel that way…”

Here’s a fresh performance I gave at the inaugural Eastport Ats & Poetry Festival in August (there’ll be another in 2027; come up and meet me!):

Buy or play my music here.

Postscript

I was remiss in not mentioning some of Cheney’s other remarkable films. Fellow Mainer Jason Anthony wrote an excellent review of “Observer.”

Observer

Here’s a snippet but read the full piece:

The film has a simple, clear, deliberate structure, much like the bright red frames it highlights. The magic of the film, we’re meant to see, is what’s inside the frame. The stream flows, and each frame captures - if only for a moment - a glimpse of the astonishing world.

Observer asks us to reconnect with nature but is not precious about it. We’re asked to see the world as it is, whether universes of microbes in Seoul’s puddles, a hellish open pit mine in Chile, or the way we tend to imagine the wilds of Greenland without its people. There’s joy and lightheartedness because our observers experience wonder and awe, and there’s grief because our observers are honest.

sound recordist Juan Pablo Culasso, Senegal / credit: Wicked Delicate Films