Barack to the Future

Columbia student splices together a bouncy election night video

Taking you back, kid.

On election night 2008, Columbia journalism student Sean Stillmaker grabbed his videocamera and interviewed the revelers in Grant Park.

"When they turned on that jumbotron," he said, "it was like a bum rush."

No music. No booze. No entertainment, said Stillmaker, then 21. Just throngs and throngs of people getting together to see the first African-American president elected.

Stillmaker, a self-taught video editor, made his way through the crowd, interviewing those people as he went: young hispanic men, a photographer who'd driven with her mom from Brooklyn, a staffer from Rainbow PUSH, black folks, white folks.

He spliced together his interviews into a hip-hop rememberance of the evening.

His video's below. At a bouncy two minutes, it's def worth it. Check it out.

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