“JOIN OR DIE is a film about why you should join a club—and why the fate of America depends on it. Follow the story of America’s civic unraveling through the journey of Robert Putnam, whose legendary “Bowling Alone” research into American community decline may hold the answers to our democracy’s present crisis.” Filmmakers Rebecca & Pete Davis on JOIN OR DIE which screens at this year’s South By Southwest Film & TV Festival.
Welcome to SxSW 2023! Are you attending your screenings in person?
Yes! Excited to be going!
Awesome! So how did JOIN OR DIE come together?
This story is personal to us. We grew up in a small Virginia town where everyone was a joiner — and we saw firsthand how a strong civic culture can make a community’s institutions run better. As a news producer at NBC, I (Rebecca) had reported on so many symptoms of our civic decline — from mass shootings to political violence to our healthcare and economic crises — that I felt called to tell a story that struck at a root cause — the fraying of our social fabric. And as a political advocate, I (Pete) witnessed how much the levels of participation of ordinary citizens affects the quality of legislation in Congress, statehouses, and city councils across the country. When we started conceiving of this film five years ago, everyone was talking about the crisis of American democracy. Americans — from all across the country, from all walks of life, from both sides of the political aisle — were searching for answers to fundamental civic questions: What makes democracy work? Why is our democracy in crisis? And, most importantly: What can we do about it? At the time, most of the paths forward we were being given — tinker with this particular rule, elect this particular person, stop this particular threat — did not seem to strike at the root of our civic crisis. But there was one angle on the crisis that was going deeper — and, in doing so, was resonating with us, and with most Americans who had come in contact with it: Social Isolation. So many of our problems seemed to stem from the breakdown of real-world community ties — and, conversely, so many of the initiatives inspiring hope across the country today started out with the goal of bringing people together, growing new relationships, and building bridges across differences. Looking at our public problems through the lens of social connections helped give us clarity we had not had before — and reflecting on the idea of weaving together American community — one club at a time, one neighborhood at time — gave us hope we had not possessed before. We hope that this film can help us share that lens and that hope with more people.
While working on a project, what is your creative process? Do you have any particular ritual or tradition when working on something?
Our journey began with a whole lot of outlining, because we needed to figure out how all the ideas we wanted to convey flowed together in an understandable and engaging way. Then, we turned into curators, searching around the country and deep in old archives to find the perfect interviewees, community groups, and archival materials to illustrate and elaborate on the ideas we outlined. Finally, we brought on a team that aligned with our creative vision and had the craft skills — editing, animation, music, sound design — to bring all the pieces to life.
If you had one favourite moment out of this entire project, the “Yes, this is IT” moment, what would that be?
The moment we found out that we got into SXSW!
I love to get technical, so I would love to know about the visual design of the movie from the cameras you used and the formats and your relation to the cinematographer.
The film relies heavily on the beautiful animation work of Austin local Mark Lopez of Silkworm Studios. For cameras, film was shot on Sony FX9 and Arri Alexa. Most of the interviews were shot by Ronan Killeen — NYC based DP, and all of our community profiles were shot by local DPs from the communities that we were covering.
What are you looking forward to the most about showing your project at SxSW 2023?
We can’t wait to check out the other documentaries in the festival — and, of course, breakfast tacos from Veracruz All Natural.
Where is this going next? More festivals or a theatrical or streaming release?
We’re off to the Cleveland International Film Fest the next weekend after SXSW and then showing at Capital City Film Fest and Milwaukee Film Festival after that and hope to tour the country from there.
How do you feel about the current moviegoing climate? Are you wishing more people to see movies in theatres, or is it okay to opt for a streaming release where more people could potentially see a movie?
As filmmakers interested in the exploring community we have to cheerlead the theater experience as watching together has benefits that we can’t get watching alone!
What is the one thing that you would say to someone who is looking to get into movies, even now in such a changing world?
We love Mister Rogers’ wisdom that “deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.” If you’re going to work on long-term projects that aim to stand the test of time, it’s best to have them built on deep and simple ideas.
And final question: what is the greatest movie you have ever seen at a film festival and why?
In designing our film’s structure, we drew inspiration from the 2006 documentary, AN INCONVIENENT TRUTH. In that documentary, director Davis Guggenheim mixes Al Gore’s findings and graphs about global warming with his own personal journey in discovering those findings, making a topic that could be dry, into a riveting journey. In Join or Die, we aim to do the same with Putnam’s findings and his decades-long quest in discovering them—and more importantly, inspire our audience to action. In the way that An Inconvenient Truth awoke audiences to the fraying of our physical environment by sharing engaging scientific data and concepts, we aimed to do the same for awaking audiences to the fraying of our civic environment by sharing engaging social scientific data and concepts.
This film and many others like it will be showing at South By Southwest taking place March 10-19. For more information point your browser to www.sxsw.com!