Very well done. Enjoyed this story so much, and have been curious about Mobile's geographic history since asking my "but why" questions when driving underneath the Mobile River as a child, on family trips to see my grandfather in Point Clear. Mobile is such an odd patchwork of communities, commercial and industrial developments, surrounded by hardwood swamps, river deltas and marsh. It is also an older community on the coast with certain gentile traditions that are barely visible through the crust of heavy industry and commercial sprawl, all you will see on the interstates that ring it. This film tangentially deals with a bit of the economic history of the north end area known as Africatown. While at heart it is another story of dispossessed people, exploitation and dehumanization, it becomes very real through the lens of the people who gathered their resources to find the wreck of the Clotilde and through it reinvision their community and history.
First time I saw signage for Africatown, i made the basic assumption of Alabama being Alabama, like Memphis TN has a suburb called Whitehaven. The truth is far more complex and interesting, truth revealed by both oral tradition and scholarship, home video and underwater archaeology.
So the story of bootlegger overseas slave smugglers decades after the practice was outlawed, on a whim and a dare of a powerful family is riveting on its own. In spite of numerous stories of smuggling along the gulfcoast's river delta's, the idea of slave bootleggers never occurred to me until viewing. The story of a community Bringing forth the means for restorative justice is handled delicately but assertively with a deft hand, considering the implicit controversies it forces the larger community and viewers to confront, whatever their POV, given our interesting times. Every time I drive the coast between TX and FL, I will be looking at the back bays, river deltas and adjacent development with new eyes.
First time I saw signage for Africatown, i made the basic assumption of Alabama being Alabama, like Memphis TN has a suburb called Whitehaven. The truth is far more complex and interesting, truth revealed by both oral tradition and scholarship, home video and underwater archaeology.
So the story of bootlegger overseas slave smugglers decades after the practice was outlawed, on a whim and a dare of a powerful family is riveting on its own. In spite of numerous stories of smuggling along the gulfcoast's river delta's, the idea of slave bootleggers never occurred to me until viewing. The story of a community Bringing forth the means for restorative justice is handled delicately but assertively with a deft hand, considering the implicit controversies it forces the larger community and viewers to confront, whatever their POV, given our interesting times. Every time I drive the coast between TX and FL, I will be looking at the back bays, river deltas and adjacent development with new eyes.