“They Were There” — Errol Morris Finally Directs a Film for IBM

In the late 1990s, Errol Mor­ris, the acclaimed direc­tor, was hired to make a film for an “in house” con­fer­ence of IBM employ­ees. Even­tu­al­ly IBM can­celed the con­fer­ence, and the film was scrapped. (Watch a clip of it here.) Now more than a decade lat­er, IBM has brought Mor­ris back, this time to direct a film meant to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of the com­pa­ny’s found­ing. The 30-minute film, They Were There, appears on IBM’s YouTube Chan­nel, and it notably fea­tures music by Philip Glass.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Novem­ber 22, 1963: Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion

Film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris Gives Us “11 Excel­lent Rea­sons Not to Vote?”

Errol Mor­ris Med­i­tates on the Mean­ing and His­to­ry of Abra­ham Lincoln’s Last Pho­to­graph