2009 AFI Dallas Film Festival - One Nation

(USA, 2008, 111 mins)
HDCam
World Premiere
Directed By: Justin Wilson, Tony Wann, Jack Waldrip
Executive Producer: Jack Waldrip
Editors: Justin Wilson, Tony Wann, Jack Waldrip

In the beginning of One Nation, news anchors on a small TV proclaim “If this report does what we hope it will do, it will report reality…All art is the rearrangement to previous perceptions, and we don’t claim that this is anything more than that, or even that journalism is an art for that mater, but we do think this is sort of a new approach.”

Thus begins our journey, month by month, into 1968, a year that lives in infamy.

Director Justin Wilson was too young to experience the King and Bobby Kennedy assignations, Nixon’s election, the Olympics and the Vietnam war. But he takes images from TV, photographs and the music of the era and mixes them masterfully in the cultural blender, in a fresh and thoughtful way. The similarities between war and politics are shocking similar, the look and the media is shocking different. The music is the music of oldies stations.

Audiences of Justin’s age will come away with an appreciation of history and a context for the music. People who lived through it will remember and One Nation will trigger many memories. All of us will come away thinking war and politicians stay mostly the same, while the media, and the music change. But maybe now, after this November we can have hope for something better.

Information from the festival's website