#Faceboof mark baumer series#

Do you have a favourite anecdote or fact you learned about Mark? In your film Mark comes across as a very charismatic and a somewhat quirky individual. They didn’t advance the story or tell us anything new about Mark, so they sadly didn’t make it into the final film. I spent time trying to edit these into the film, but they ultimately didn’t work. The videos are truly strange and contain moments of comedic gold.

#Faceboof mark baumer series#

Within that collection, Mark had a series of videos in which he prank called literary agents and left them long voicemails. I watched and transcribed all of them while preparing to edit the documentary. Mark had a YouTube channel containing nearly 500 videos that spanned a decade.

Was there anything else that made the cutting room floor? Why?

In one interview you mentioned that you had wanted to incorporate excerpts from Mark’s book into your film. I’m grateful that his family and friends were so kind, generous, and open to collaboration. So I set out to contact his loved ones and embark on making a documentary about Mark’s life. Ultimately, I knew that Mark’s videos needed to be preserved and that his story needed to be told, now more than ever. It was terrible to lose a remarkable environmentalist just as a climate change denier was rising to power. He was killed on Janu– the same weekend that Donald Trump was inaugurated. I hoped to collaborate with him one day, after he finished his walk, but never got the chance to. I kept watching and quickly became a fan. I loved his sense of humor, his fearlessness, and his passion for environmental justice.

I finally clicked on one and was immediately pulled into Mark’s videos documenting his barefoot walk across America. What first attracted you to making a film about Mark Baumer?īack in 2016, a friend of mine frequently shared Mark’s videos on Facebook. Screening as part of the digital Transitions Film Festival, we caught up with Director Julie Sokolow to talk about her new documentary Barefoot: The Mark Baumer Story.