South
Icarus Films • 1h 10m
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 1999 • 70 minutes
Inspired by her love of William Faulkner and James Baldwin, renowned director Chantal Akerman had planned to produce a meditation on the American South. However, just days before she was to begin filming, James Byrd, Jr. was murdered in Jasper, Texas. A black family man, Byrd has been severely beaten by three white men, chained to their truck, and dragged three miles through predominately black parts of the county.
Alternating static shots and dolly shots, Akerman reconstitutes the horrible incident. "We found pieces of his body all along the road," says one witness. But this is not an anatomy of his murder, nor the autopsy of a black man lynched by three white males. Rather, it is an evocation of how this event fits in to a landscape and climate that is as much mental as physical.
"Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important European director of her generation."—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
Up Next in Icarus Films
-
Spark of Being
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2010 • 67 minutes
An adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" using found film footage, with an original soundtrack by Dave Douglas, performed by Keystone. It explores the thematic interchangeability of three of the novel’s characters: the Captain, th...
-
Starfish Aorta Colossus
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2015 • 5 minutes
Poetry watches film. Film reads poetry. Paolo Javier’s text is a catalyst for the digital sculpting of an 8mm Kodachrome canvas. Syntactical ruptures and the celebration of nouns illuminate twenty-five years of rediscovered film journeys. ...
-
States of Unbelonging
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2015 • 63 minutes
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle Eas...
