Press - Whitman, Alabama

Press

Press

What's Being Said about Whitman, Alabama.

“…deeply, wonderfully jarring, like a hallucination—watching it, I felt as though a puzzle I’d forgotten about was unlocking.” ~ Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker & author of Trick Mirror

“Crandall has traveled around Alabama like a latter-day Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange…Whitman, Alabama, consists of a collection of captivating portraits, and takes an approach to storytelling that feels simultaneously natural and strange.”

“The poet would be proud.”

“The juxtaposition of Whitman’s exuberant free verse with everyday, down-home contexts can yield results that are both poignant and thought-provoking…The project starts to achieve a cumulative power, and its overall arc becomes clearer, as more videos are released.”

“If Whitman’s poem is a love letter to the human spirit, then Whitman, Alabama is a love letter to all those things that make us–and this group of Alabamians–utterly and beautifully human.”

“Wow, what a wonderful project: Whitman, Alabama – filmmaker
@jenncrandall spent two years traveling across the American South, recording people express themselves with verses from “Song of Myself” in a lyrical exploration of America’s multitudinal identity.”

“A deeply affirmative, wise, strange and sometimes funny set of 52 mini-documentaries or episodes.”

“The project is journalistic at heart, presenting a pointillistic portrait of the expansive American identity…we’re offered a nuanced profile of an oft-stereotyped state, a gentle tug on the connective tissue of our heartstrings, and a comforting respite amid the chaos of our current political climate…It’s a reminder that, even as our political institutions fail us, Americans are defined neither by territory nor time, but by our imaginative empathy. Whitman, Alabama enlivens these abstractions, showing not what America is or ever was, but what it should always hope to be: experimental and egalitarian…Crandall has created a proof of concept for the all-encompassing American identity evoked in Whitman’s Song of Myself.”

“It’s a deeply humanizing project. For those who know and love the poem’s most famous verse, the reading by Donnie Goodin [verse 51], a joy-filled Birmingham candy-busker with cerebral palsy, will knock your socks off.”

“In an age where everyone in journalism is trying to figure out what the future might hold in times of mass upheaval, Jennifer Crandall might just have some answers… Her sensibility permeates through the videos, which in other hands might have felt dry or simplistic…The installments of ‘Whitman, Alabama’ that have been published feel extremely intimate – while the subjects from all walks of life read the sublime poem’s words, life happens around them; it feels like they get at some fundamental truth that is hard to express through our own language.”

“Whitman, Alabama, captures the spirit of the state and its people while illustrating the many themes of the poem—race, religion, politics, sexuality, and immigration—that the nation continues to wrestle with today.”

“[Crandall’s] started a conversation and channeled Walt Whitman. That’s a big achievement in itself.”

“…the videos feel individual and universal at the same time…By asking readers to step outside their comfort zones, Holmes and Crandall hope viewers will be inspired to consider, even re-consider, what it means to be an Alabamian, an American, and a human being—something both great art and great journalism do especially well.”

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"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

WALT WHITMAN, "SONG OF MYSELF"