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The Public Record – Trailer from KERTIS on Vimeo.
The Public Record
Directed by Ben Freedman
Co-created and Executive Produced by Chelsae Ketcham
Executive Produced by Stephen Kertis
Streaming August 14 – 30
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$5 Non-members | $3 Speed members
Promo Code: SPEEDMEMBER
As the world entered lockdown, a team of filmmakers invited over sixty residents of Louisville, KY to use their smartphones to record their everyday lives. In a time of polarization and isolation, this was collaboration on a citywide scale. The most private of moments weaved together with striking imagery to tell the intimate story of a city, and a country, at breaking point.
Late in the film, one of the participants describes the pandemic as “the great magnifier” of economic and racial disparity in America. If the pandemic is a magnifier, then The Public Record is a microscope that offers an emotional portrait of how this moment feels–for a front-line nurse, a high school graduate, an elderly couple, an activist, a teacher, and many more.
As the lockdown gives way to public protests, The Public Record follows some of its participants out of their home and into the streets to discover that it is in moments of crisis that we become politically activated. A timely testimony of Americans’ personal and political lives, this is the record of today, told by the public.
2020, U.S., 37 minutes. Followed by a discussion with Director Ben Freedman, Executive Producer Stephen Kertis, Editor Tobias Van Kleek, and documentary participants Mariel Gardner and Keith McGill.
Co-presented with Louisville Film Society’s Flyover Film Festival.