Dear Friends,
I just saw the final cut of a new film being produced by Inequality Media, and I can’t wait for you to see it.
I wasn’t sure what to expect.
It’s from the team behind The Last Class film about my final semester of teaching. They interviewed me for a short time about America’s 250th anniversary and then went into America to hear from average people. What has emerged is a look at our country that is urgent and beautiful.
Directed by Ian Cheney, the film is called The Work in Progress and poses this critical question: What do we owe each other as members of the same society?
Tickets for The Work in Progress are now available at 23 theaters across 17 states, plus D.C. Please go to the film’s website to sign up to get tickets, learn when we’ll do our first live watchalong — and join the national discussion we’re building: www.theworkinprogressfilm.com.
The film brings together 100 strangers from across generations and geographies to ask where they think America is going.
It opens in New York City in September.
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.
See you at the movies,
Robert Reich
P.S. Feel free to write in the comments where (city and state, or even specific theater) you’d like to have the film shown. And you can see the trailer for The Work in Progress here:
Thanks Bob! It was a delight making this film with you, Heather, Elliot, Meredith and the whole gang. What an adventure. Most of documentary filmmaking amounts to good listening, but I suppose this film took it to a whole new level. Now comes the adventure of bringing the film out into the world, and listening anew to what people have to say!
Will it eventually be streamed? Where?