On the eve of one of the most important election days in recent history, many voters will be walking around with their fingers crossed in hopes their preferred candidate doesn’t lose. Some will be praying the country doesn’t elect a “third term for Bush,” others an “inexperienced spendo-crat,” but most will simply cheer along their party line.
The political dichotomy of the United States’ bipartisan system has come to a crest over the last decade, as polarizing issues such as the war in Iraq, gay rights and abortion are routinely fanned by political agendas and factual spins of privately owned news networks and exploitative documentaries.
Portland native and University alumnus Jeff Beard wants to mend the discourse of today’s political landscape with “Split: A Divided America,” a film that tries to open up dialect across the party aisle with candid interviews from some of the most analytical thinkers representing the left and the right. The result is an unbiased, nonpartisan documentary that doesn’t set out to answer one question, but six.
Filmed on a cross-country road trip, producer Beard, director Kelly Nyks and writer Peter Hutchison interviewed 50 different people, some well-known political pundits, some normal citizens from all walks of life. The only thing these 50 people had in common is that they were asked the same six questions.
“We decided best as citizen journalists that asking the same six questions would be the fairest way to obtain our information,” said Beard. “This way, we’d have a large amount of equal data that we’d have to use from.”
The questions, asked to the likes of Reverend Jesse Jackson, Noam Chomsky and Al Franken, are simple and broad-based: How are we divided? Can we talk about politics? What role does faith play in our politics? Do the media divide us? Do campaigns divide us? What’s the answer? And for every different person there was a different answer.
After working on “Split” for 3 1/2 years, Beard determined that the reason for the documented political experiment was to actively inform people about the political issues and political perspectives that affect the country today.
“Too many people talk; there are a lot of armchair quarterbacks,” Beard said. “The idea behind (the documentary) is to be proactive in the community. Whether it’s making a feature documentary or being a part of an organization, we should be involved and get off the couch.”
You can purchase “Split: A Divided America” on DVD online at www.splitdoc.com for $14.99 or download the film from iTunes for $3.99.
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