THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD continuously documents each individual who becomes the oldest living person.

As characters inevitably pass away and the title moves from one person to the next, our project becomes a poignant meditation on time, love, loss, and the profound human experience of being alive.

In 2014, Sam Green made a film about the Guinness World Records called THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS. The film, which premiered at Sundance, featured all sorts of records: the person with the longest name, the tallest man, the biggest cat, the longest period of time a person has gone without sleep…

But one record struck Sam above all the others: the oldest person in the world.

Whenever someone dies, they take with them all of the knowledge and experiences in their memory.

The last Titanic survivor died in 2010. The last WWI veteran died in 2012. When Albert Woolson, the last veteran of the Civil War, died in 1956, Life Magazine wrote: “There was an open door to the past, but when the last notes of the bugle hung against the sky, that door swung shut. It cannot be reopened.”

It strikes me that one day there will be no one alive who saw the Twin Towers fall, or who experienced the election of America’s first Black president.

As you might imagine, the record is passed down frequently from one super old person to one slightly younger super old person. We started filming with these people in 2015, and intend to film every one of them  from here on out. This will be a life work.

After the initial version of the film premieres (covering one decade), every few years we will have the footage to edit a new version incorporating a new set of oldest people mixed in with footage from the earlier films. In this way, it will become an ever-evolving “living film,” with characters coming and going just as they do in life.

The form will mirror the fleeting and provisional nature of our lives.