Still from Join or Die, showing Robert Putnam’s youth bowling team. Courtesy of Abramorama
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from siblings Rebecca and Pete Davis’s Join or Die. Their debut feature documentary examines civic duty and democratic participation in the U.S. through the continued relevance of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. After the film’s world premiere at SXSW last year, Abramorama picked it up and is releasing Join or Die in theaters tomorrow.
Regarding the clip, the co-directors write, “It is hard to wrap our arms around a topic as big as ‘American community.’ However, Harvard professor and Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam has, perhaps better than anyone else living today, attempted to do so. Even better, he is a master at translating his trailblazing social science research on America’s social fabric into engaging stories.
“For decades, he has explained to rapt audiences around the country—from VFW halls to the Oval Office—his illuminating findings on the fraying of our nation’s social fabric, but the entirety of his work has never been featured in a documentary film with the potential to reach a much wider audience. In this clip, we come along with Bob as he recounts the first moments when he started to realize things in American community life might be off, a journey that would eventually bring him to write his famed Bowling Alone, which came out in 2000, and is revisited 20 years later, in Join or Die.”
Join or Die weaves this focus on Putnam with interviews with politicians and mini-profiles on six contemporary community groups. Rebecca Davis was previously supervising producer for Vox’s Explained, and Pete Davis authored Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in An Age of Infinite Browsing.