![]() But the film also works to meld the past and present through evocative readings of remembrances from Cudjoe Lewis, one of enslaved people taken to Mobile on the Clotilda’s voyage. Through rich and meditative cinematography and sound design as alive as the cicadas in the bushes, Brown and her team create a sense of the community the Clotilda descendants have built in Africatown. “Descendant” is a single tense title, but it follows the community of Africatown, which is part of the greater Mobile, Alabama area (although it certainly isn’t zoned like a suburb), and the many descendants of the Clotilda who still live there. It’s been there the entire time.” But the mystery of where the ship was sunk and the process of how it was found again aren’t nearly as interesting to Brown’s film as the tension of who will get to benefit from the slave ship Clotilda’s recovery. As documentary subject and writer of the film Kern Jackson puts it, “The boat’s waiting to get raised up. ![]() ![]() ![]() On its surface, Margaret Brown’s “Descendant” is about the rediscovery of the wreck of the last slave ship to (illegally) arrive in the United States in July of 1860, less than a year before the start of the American Civil War. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |