A documentary captured over a road trip across the heartland of the United States, American Dendrite is a meditation on the climate, culture, and collective consciousness of people connected by living alongside the Mississippi River system. With a vintage Super 8mm film camera, director Adam Marshall Present and his crew trace the path of water flowing from their home city of Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. Each person they encounter along the way is asked to share stories, memories, or what they are feeling at that moment - with their only prompt being to listen to what the previous person up the river has shared. As this “flow of conversation” takes place alongside the country’s most vital and storied river, the result is a living time capsule of this pivotal moment in American history. A wide range of participants express their personal challenges and reasons for hope, uncovering a shared spirit of what it means to be an American right now. This timeless yet contemporary road trip, which can be likened to a game of telephone down the river, sheds light how the forces of water, geography, and circumstance bind us together.

Filmmaker expected to attend for live Q&A.

Director Biography

Emerging director Adam Marshall Present focuses on the connective bonds between humanity and the natural world, through unconventional storytelling. Present grew up in New Jersey and attended film school at Northwestern University. He has been a producer’s assistant on NBC’s Chicago Fire, P.D., and Med television shows, worked in the editorial department at nonfiction studio Words + Pictures in New York City, and has collaborated with the Independent Film Alliance in Chicago to develop community-building programming for local university film students and recent graduates. The documentary American Dendrite is his feature directorial debut.