Filmmaker encourages students, teens to run for office
posted by Ashley Caster on 03.08.09
Filmmaker Jason Pollock visited Monroe Community College last week to screen his film “The Youngest Candidate.”
The 27-year-old switched from acting to film-making after spending two years working for ABC, where he applied to be an assistant to Michael Moore.
“I guess (Moore) saw something in me and decided to give me a shot,” said Pollock, who worked on Moore’s Slacker Uprising tour in 2004, which traveled to over 60 cities to promote Moore’s film and urge a younger generation to vote.
The tour inspired Pollock to make a non-partisan film about teen politics called, “The Youngest Candidate,” which debuted in ‘08. The film follows the lives of four young people running for public office in the United States. Pollock spent three years making “The Youngest Candidate,” which is intended to encourage teens to run for public office.
“I did a year-and-a-half of research before filming,” said Pollock, “I wanted to find kids to be the faces of the youth movement and they needed to be interesting on camera.”
He added that many teens don’t run for office, “because they don’t know they can, or they don’t think it’s cool.”
Anyone is eligible to run for office once they turn 18, he said.
Pollock said he learned several things about while making his film.
“What surprised me the most was how much racism there is in politics, there’s a lot of corruption in local politics, they get away with a lot of things you wouldn’t even think about,” he said.
Pollock recently showed his film during PowerShift ‘09 in Washington D.C., an event to inspire youth to challenge politicians to do something about global warming. He’s trying to spread awareness about the issue since it isn’t covered much in the main-stream media.
Ashley Caster is a communication: journalism/media studies major at unknown in the class of 2009