Matinee
Series/Themes: Black Excellence, Critical Conversations, Environmental Film Series, Women in Film Focus
Genre: Documentaries
Film Year: 2022
Locations: USA
Film Length: 109 min.
Languages: English
Director: Margaret Brown
2022 Sundance Film Festival, US Documentary Special Jury Award Winner
Three miles north of downtown Mobile, Alabama sits Africatown, a community of around 2,000 residents and home to most descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship illegally carrying enslaved Africans to the United States. The illegally chartered expedition arrived in America nearly fifty years after the United States outlawed the international slave trade and promptly burned upon arrival to erase it from memory, leaving the Clotilda to exist only in secrecy and speculation. Now, more than a century later, the descendants of the Clotilda survivors come together to reclaim their ancestors’ narrative and demand accountability in this striking documentary. Discussion with subject Kern Jackson, moderated by Robert Daniels (indieWIRE)
This film is part of the Environmental Film Series presented by Southern Environmental Law Center.