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Saturday, June 13
5:00 PM - 6:45 PM

Burke Theatre at the US Navy Memorial

701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004

for all screenings

The Great Experiment

Film Languages

English, Spanish

Co-Directors

Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar

Executive Producers

Anne Marie Stein, Richard MacMillan, Agnes Mentre, Lyda Kuth, Kirsten Johnson, Jon Levin

Co-Executive Producers

Rachel Traub, Jihan Robinson

Consulting Producers

Kristin Feeley, Shane Boris, Tracie Holder

Producers

Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar, Farihah Zaman

Editors

Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar

Cinematographers

Stephen Maing, Eric Metzgar, Nathan Golon, Zac Manuel, Ray Whitehouse, Erik Ljung, Jason Outenreath, Amy Bench, Micah Garen

Sound

César González Cortés, Jesus Arteaga

Music

Meredith Monk, Live Footage, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Che Chen, Ka Baird

Contact

Stephen Maing stevemaing@gmail.com; Farihah Zaman farihahzaman@gmail.com

What happens when neighbors become strangers, when shared spaces become contested ground, and when the very idea of a common future stops feeling possible? THE GREAT EXPERIMENT considers the results of what George Washington once called “our last great experiment” in democracy. Filmed in striking black and white across the U.S. over four years, from 2017 to 2021, the film does not set out to adjudicate the political battles of its era but instead observes and engages the recent past with the critical distance of an archive.

The approach is spatial and observational—less interested in the ideological binary of left and right than in the vast, complicated country that exists at the intersection of many kinds of American experience. With rare and intimate access, the camera moves across an extraordinary range of scenes: Gays for Trump; ICE arrests and deportations; flustered Antifa activists; and migrants navigating a country whose welcome has grown uncertain. It witnesses Civil War reenactors summoning the same rhetorical reasoning as Confederate monument protesters.

In much the way Robert Frank traveled the U.S. in the mid-1950s—bearing witness yet refusing to editorialize in his seminal photographic anthology of America—the film weaves these lives together not to resolve their contradictions, but to hold them in the same frame long enough for something rare to emerge: not more analysis, but a moment of genuine reflection amid upheaval. It offers a chance to step back from the noise and see this country, in all its diversity and difference, honestly and without looking away.

Content Warning: This film contains an image of skeletal remains. Viewer discretion is advised.
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Stephen Maing

Co-Director, Co-Editor, THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

Stephen Maing is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker. His most recent films, UNION (P.O.V./Criterion Channel) and CRIME + PUNISHMENT (Hulu/IFC), won Special Jury Awards at the Sundance Film Festival and were shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. CRIME + PUNISHMENT also received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. He was a story producer and editor on the Academy Award–winning documentary ALL THE EMPTY ROOMS (Netflix). His previous films, which he also directed, filmed, and edited—HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE, THE SURRENDER, and DIRTY GOLD—have screened internationally, received numerous awards, and were released on P.O.V., Field of Vision, and Netflix, respectively. Maing has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, the Sundance Institute, and NBC Original Voices, and was a recipient of the International Documentary Association’s Courage Under Fire Award alongside the whistleblowers of the NYPD12 from CRIME + PUNISHMENT. He has worked as an adjunct professor and filmmaking mentor at numerous universities and organizations.

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Eric Daniel Metzgar

Co-director, The Great Experiment

Eric Daniel Metzgar is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and two-time Sundance Documentary Lab Fellow. He directed, shot, and edited REPORTER, which premiered at Sundance, aired on HBO, and was nominated for an Emmy. Metzgar also directed, shot, and edited LIFE. SUPPORT. MUSIC (P.O.V., 2008) and the Independent Spirit Award–nominated THE CHANCES OF THE WORLD CHANGING (P.O.V., 2006). He edited and produced the Emmy Award–winning CRIME + PUNISHMENT and edited the Emmy-nominated films GIVE UP TOMORROW and ALMOST SUNRISE. Metzgar teaches Buddhist meditation at Deuel Vocational Institution, a maximum-security prison in California, and mentors inmates in San Quentin Prison’s journalism program.

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