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Thread ID: 7010 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-05-30
2003-05-30 20:31 | User Profile
New Film 'C.S.A.' Attacks Southern History Links Confederacy To Persecution Of Jews
I ask what about all the Jewish slave traders who lived in the C.S.A.?
**Film Attacks Southern History Links Confederacy To Persecution Of Jews
5/30/03 3:00:24 PM Discuss this story in the forum Kansas City Star
Kansas City, Missouri -- http:/ /www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/5953610.htm
Posted on Thu, May. 29, 2003
Final cut of 'C.S.A.' raises curtain for KAN Film Festival
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
Kevin Willmott's "C.S.A." starts out with what appears to be your typical schmaltzy TV commercial for life insurance.
A suburban dad. A little girl learning to ride her bike. Swelling music. And an unctuous male voice reaffirming the enduring value of "the master of the house protecting his family and his property."
On the word "property" the image cuts to a young black man doing yard work. Then the logo appears for the Confederate Life Insurance Company.
Welcome to an alternative universe in which the South won the Civil War. Slavery is still a going concern, the C.S.A. is officially a Christian nation (after much debate Congress decided that Catholicism was a Christian faith, but Jews have been herded onto a reservation on Long Island) and Elvis has fled to Canada where he can sing "race music" without fear of arrest.
We're all familiar with "mockumentaries," those satiric faux documentaries. But Willmott, who teaches film and television at the University of Kansas, has created a whopper. Yes, "C.S.A." is funny, but it's also unmistakably angry as Willmott rewrites history to make us look at ourselves through new eyes.
A rough cut of "C.S.A." debuted nearly two years ago at the Halfway to Hollywood Film Festival, but the screening at 6:30 tonight at the Crown Center Cinema -- the kickoff event of this year's KAN Film Festival -- represents the final cut of this 90-minute effort.
The premise is that this is a special night of TV programming in the Confederate States of America. A long-suppressed BBC documentary about the isolated C.S.A. is finally being aired, with commercial spots purchased by such products as the Shackle (an electronic device to monitor wandering domestics), a "Cops"-type TV show called "Runaway" about slave catchers, and Contrary, a drug that tames unruly servants though it comes with a list of scary side effects: "Not meant for slaves who are nursing or about to drop a litter."
Offended yet? Willmott is just getting started. In his version, the Confederacy won thanks to military intervention by the French and English who chose Southern cotton over their abolitionist ideals. (Confederate diplomats cannily argued that the war was about state's rights, not slavery. Sound familiar?)
All of this is presented in a dead-on accurate parody of the Ken Burns documentary style. Willmott's ability to seamlessly mix vintage newsreels with phony footage doctored to look old is astounding. There's even some silent footage of a white-bearded Abraham Lincoln, purportedly taken just before his death in Canadian exile in 1906, that is absolutely eerie.
"C.S.A." may be too smart for its own good. Americans are so ignorant of our own history that some of the cleverest material on display here is going to sail right over the heads of a general audience.
But it hardly seems right to knock so creative an effort for not being dumb enough.
To reach Robert W. Butler, movie editor, call (816) 234-4760 or send e-mail to bbutler@kcstar.com.
url: [url=http://www.overthrow.com/lsn/news.asp?articleID=5162]http://www.overthrow.com/lsn/news.asp?articleID=5162[/url] **
2003-05-30 20:40 | User Profile
Whoop-de-do; another anti-South flick made by a university employee. Wouldn't it be interesting if a pro-South film was made by someone in the same industry, let alone anybody??
2003-05-31 01:54 | User Profile
"New Film 'C.S.A.' Attacks Southern History Links Confederacy To Persecution Of Jews"
and what if it were true... just like all the other bs claims about such persecution...
if so we wouldnt be all under such a heavy media overlay now...