Showtimes
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Description
FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE!
What holds a people together when the story they tell about themselves begins to fracture? THE GREAT EXPERIMENT is an epic poem in documentary form – a mirror held to a nation at war with its own reflection, asking not who is right, but whether the experiment itself can survive. Filmed in stunning black and white across diverse regions throughout the United States from 2017 to 2020 (including right here in Wisconsin!), this film serves as a meditation on the recent past that refracts our lives into the near future.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Stephen Maing!
Community Partner: Bay Bridge Wisconsin
- Year
- 2026
- Length
- 100 minutes
- Language
- English, Spanish
- Rating
- UR
- Country
- United States
- Directors
- Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar
- Producers
- Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar, Farihah Zaman
- Cinematographer
- Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar, Nathan Golon, Zac Manuel, Ray Whitehouse, Erik Ljung, Jason Outenreath, Amy Bench, Micah Garen
- Editor
- Stephen Maing, Eric Daniel Metzgar
- Music
- Meredith Monk, Live Footage, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Che Chen & Ka Baird
- Executive Producer
- Anne Marie Stein, Richard MacMillan, Kirsten Johnson, Jon Levin, Agnes Mentre, Lyda Kuth
The Pitch
Shot in pristine, vérité-style monochrome that grants these relatively recent images a grave sense of history already made, “The Great Experiment” is a wholly observational feat of docmaking, forgoing talking heads or guiding voiceover for neutrally captured vignettes from everyday life — sometimes banal, sometimes chaotic — for Americans of various political persuasions between 2017 and 2021, assembled as a teeming mosaic that reaches no tidy rhetorical conclusion.
Variety
Proudly Supported by Associated Bank
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