The trailer for the documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project has been released and gives audiences a peek into the life of its titular subject.

For those unfamiliar, Marion Stokes was a woman who preserved over 30 years of television history. Equal parts activist and wealthy archivist, Stokes had a fascination with the influence of television and how it shapes public perception.

For 24 hours a day, Stokes would obsessively record American television, such as sitcoms, commercials, war footage, talk shows and political news coverage, such as the Iran hostage crisis.

Stokes eventually recorded upwards of 70,000 tapes, providing a vast canvas of the history of America as seen through the lens of mass media.

Here’s the official descriptions: Recorder delves into the curious world of Marion Stokes, a Communist activist who later became a fabulously wealthy recluse archivist. Marion secretly recorded American television twenty-four hours a day for thirty years. It started in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis and ended on December 14, 2012 while the Sandy Hook massacre played on television as Marion passed away. In between, she recorded on 70,000 VHS tapes, capturing revolutions, lies, wars, triumphs, catastrophes, talk shows, and commercials that tell us who we were, and show how television shaped the world of today. Her visionary and maddening project nearly tore her family apart, but now her tapes are now being digitized for future generations

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project will be released in theaters on November 15 through Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber.

Check out the first trailer below:

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Photo: Kino Lorber

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