Director features film at MSU

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A young director’s first piece left a small crowd clapping furiously last week when he showed the award-winning film at MSU for one of the first times with the hope of eventually gaining funding from ASMSU.

Jason Pollock’s documentary, “The Youngest Candidate,” which won Best Non-Fiction Film by a New Filmmaker at the Traverse City Film Festival this year, followed four different young Americans vying for political office across the country.

Pollock said the result is the tale of big dreams and political corruption, with highlights of the ignorance among young people and adults.

“Most kids and adults don’t know that teenagers can run for office in America,” the 27-year-old director said. “Kids are running and winning all over America.”

Pollock showed the film to a group in a basement classroom of Snyder hall last Wednesday.

At the Sept. 18 ASMSU Student Assembly meeting, a bill to fund $10,000 to host a Nov. 2 concert featuring clips from “The Youngest Candidate” failed.

ASMSU is MSU’s undergraduate student government.

The event would encourage students to vote and some of the young candidates from the documentary would attend.

ASMSU members were hesitant to spend $10,000 without a precise budget of how the money would be spent.

Some members also were concerned with Pollock’s association with notorious left-wing director Michael Moore, with whom Pollock worked for three years.

“I was so sad about that,” Pollock said. “They felt that just because I was Michael Moore’s assistant, it was a partisan thing. It’s a positive film — it’s about educating kids to run for office.”

Pollock added that the film was deemed “nonpartisan” by The Associated Press. He does plan on presenting the bill again, this time with a more specific plan for how the money would be spent.

The concert will be held with or without ASMSU’s support at the Auditorium.

Only one ASMSU member was present for the film and stayed to talk to Pollock afterward. Student Assembly’s communication arts and sciences representative Matthew York was impressed.

“I really enjoyed the documentary,” York said. “I’m at a loss of words for it right now.”

There are 50 teenagers serving in public office in the country.

Although the film shows the challenges candidates must face running a campaign, East Lansing’s own Nathan Triplett knows them first hand.

At the age of 23, Triplett ran for a City Council spot — and won.

“I didn’t think I was going to win,” Triplett said. “But there are a lot of people of goodwill who will look at you first and your age second.”

Triplett said he did experience blunt and sometimes rude honesty, similar to many of the candidates in the film.

“A lot of folks were not ashamed to tell me ‘I’m not even going to consider you because you don’t own a house,’” he said.

Some students were more encouraged to run for office after seeing the film.

Mechanical engineering freshman Calvin Tomaschko said he had a “huge epiphany” as a senior in high school, which told him to run for office someday.

“You forget about some of those aspirations, and when you see a movie like this, it just reaffirms it,” Tomaschko said.

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