A Nation Within
400 Film and Production company is a boutique storytelling firm with a focus on stories impacting marginalized communities. We believe in the power of storytelling and its ability to add perspective, challenge viewpoints, raise awareness and celebrate human strength. 400 F & P was founded by cousin owners, Meredith Lilly Esq. and Nichole Thompson EdD.
We provide production services and curated content across various areas of production from script to screen for biopics to documentaries.
A Nation Within is a short documentary that lifts the Infamous Tuskegee story to new heights. The Tuskegee legacy begins less than 16 years after the end of slavery. The black community of Tuskegee Al embarked on an arduous journey to educate an improvised community of recently emancipated slaves. This extraordinary unique experiment in self-determination, economic freedom and conquering the impediments to to excellence in self-sustaining development.
This is the story of how a community came together under the leadership of Booker T Washington to manufacture from the existing resources of a rural community that may have appeared as a dot on the map; to build by hand the infrastructure of the most commanding complex architecture of the day, of buildings designed by and made of bricks made from the labor of students. this story will inspire all who believe that self-help, self-determination and self-development a useless tasks.
The amazing question of how were the best and the brightest attracted to participate in the magic of Tuskegee Normal School for teachers now called to Tuskegee University, a self-sustaining place that grew all of its own food, constructed its own building, and attracted such luminaries as George Washington Carver, Robert Taylor the first a African American to graduate from MIT. Founded and funded by the likes of the great philanthropist of the day, from Henry Ford to John Rockefeller.