Synopsis
Chantal Akerman investigates the American Deep South through the story of a lynching and grisly murder of an African-American man that took place in Texas in 1998.
1999 ‘Sud’ Directed by Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman investigates the American Deep South through the story of a lynching and grisly murder of an African-American man that took place in Texas in 1998.
"We do have a few problems here in Jasper as far as, uh, racial."
As an admirer of William Faulkner, Chantal Akerman was already planning to make a film regarding the American South at the time of James Byrd Jr.'s tragic lynching (by dragging) at the hands of three subhuman racists in Jasper, Texas. While Akerman seems to have taken footage from various Southern states, she makes the city of Jasper the film's nominal focus. In due course viewers hear from jaded journalists, beleaguered residents, an affable if soft-pedaling sheriff, and a number of Byrd's friends and family members. Ultimately more suggestive than informative, these talking head sequences (along with a fair amount of footage from Byrd's memorial) are intriguing…
There's some staggering imagery in here for sure (the deep focus on the woman singing in church, the prison workers). Akerman seems to be making a very loose connection to her own history of growing up around relatives who survived the holocaust, and the parallels between that genocide and the persistent racism in America. Chantal is a filmmaker of personal interests, frequently inserting herself into the narrative, and I'm unsure if it's needed here. The problem with that is that if Chantal didn't follow her interests it wouldn't be her movie. Clumsy is the word that comes to mind when thinking about South. It's too big of a topic and the movie never really sinks it's teeth into the subject…
What I found particularly striking in South was how tangible Akerman’s empathy feels despite keeping herself entirely off screen. Akerman covers a lot of ground in a very short period of time and while it doesn’t feel like it truly sinks its teeth fully into the subject matter, it does a solid job of conveying the main points. The style works exceptionally well too.
Akerman has a powerful balancing act going here in which she places intimate and vulnerable interviews about racial injustice and violence next to long takes of the South, with nothing but ambient sound to listen to. She’s created a space where the audience has to truly ponder and dissect the dialogue they’ve just listened to before she moves on.
It moves slowly, on little tippy toes, but this film sneaks up on you.... and by its final scene...you have an emotional elephant sitting on your chest.
At least that was my experience.
Chantal Akerman travels to Texas and documents the milieu and the emotional aftermath of a horrible 1998 hate crime. With the film's long static shots and long pans...its like an amateur is behind the camera...until you begin to give yourself to the process and realize Akerman is insisting that we spend TIME observing everything...not blowing through the Texas countryside and black neighborhoods like our pants are on fire.
For days after watching this, I began to slow down and really look at the environment when I walk…
I feel like now, a few weeks after I've seen this extraordinary and deeply unsettling "documentary" by Chantal Akerman, "about" the 1999 lynching of James Byrd, Jr., I can start to voice some words on it.
As you would expect from Akerman, this is neither ordinary nor straightforward in that cloying, CNN-ish type of trash headline mode. It is gravely concerned with the way a road curves in Jasper, Texas — and, by extension, with the cacophonously silent history that has existed, still exists, on that road — as it is in the dimensions of a community church in which the funeral of a murdered member takes place, uninterrupted, allowed to unfold in all its un-shaped-by-plot sorrow.
Akerman is much…
a chantal akerman travelogue that is not only narratively shaped by a horrific coinciding event but also reflects on the fact that such painful history and systemic oppression are unavoidable if you're making a movie about the american south...well, america
Un film un peu plus classique de la part d'Akerman, peut-être que le sujet l'exigeait, mais il y aussi le feeling un peu désagréable par moments de passer à travers quelques clichés du Sud américain qui ne sont pas très explorés (contrairement à sa manière de filmer l'Est). Tout tient au travelling final au fond, une simple route qui défile, devenue insupportable par tout ce qui précède, la longueur du plan augmentant encore toujours plus le malaise. C'est un plan magistral, bien sûr, mais j'ai failli arrêter le film, c'était trop lourd à prendre ce soir.
The apex of Akerman's exploration of the way humans shape and are shaped by the space they occupy. Also the best use of talking heads ever (?) providing both the requisite historical context while also imploring the viewer to interrogate the pieces of history that aren't being touched on. In this way Akerman has sort of figured out how to aestheticize and give form to America's institutionalized racism. Trees are no longer just trees, the gas stations and country homes hide something sinister, and a sustained shot of a country road from the back of a truck asserts itself as one of the most gut-wrenching scenes ever filmed.
Its very easy to make a movie about how small towns aren't…
I do think Akerman's long, slow shots inspire the Faulkner connection quite well. Her voyeuristic tendencies feel accentuated as she drives through towns and people glance over to the camera - some wave, some smile, some shy away. I don't want to say that South feels surface-level, but it doesn't bite into the situation. Purely observational. Maybe it has to do with Akerman traveling through the area. One giant aspect of Akerman's films have always been her personal investment, and that might be what's not fully there.
Side note, it does feel surreal watching an Akerman film and intimately recognizing the exact same, specific sounds - birds, bugs, sticks - she hears as she goes through a forest. I swear there's one consistent bird call in this scene that would wake me up every day for high school.
This might be a very mild spoiler (are spoilers for documentaries a thing? they shouldn't be) but the final shot, which starts and then keeps going--once you realize what's happening, it's one of the more understated yet genuinely horrific endings to a film that I can remember. I'm not sure if Akerman's approach is wholly effective, but yeezus, what a takeaway for the viewer.
(And if you're not familiar with the crime that the film is centered around, a brief description-plenty horrific in its own right--can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd_Jr.)
It moves slowly, which is something I never liked in movies. However she really portrays the city of Jaspers, Texas. The camera fades perfectly, it's not intrusive. She uses long quiet shots to depict the horror of the murder of James Byrd's.
I am in the process of reading Isabel Wilkinson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, in which the author draws philosophical and rigorously historical parallels between the rigid caste system of India; the eugenics and ethnic purification of National Socialism; and the looser, economically motivated form of American apartheid. It is hard to think that the connection between Blacks in America and European Jews was far from Akerman's mind given her roots in the Holocaust.
Akerman trains her deadpan lens on life in the South, with the strict monotony (and attendant narrative economy) that she applies in the seemingly abstract exercises of Hotel Monterey. Her locale here is Jasper County, Texas. To anchor the scene throughout, she leans on steady…
In-between visits to Russia, Poland, and East Germany for D’Est in 1993, and to Mexico for Down There in 2006, in 1998, Chantal Akerman travelled to Jasper, Texas. There she finds beautiful landscapes, friendly people, and no shortage of racial problems, both historic and continuing. In between extended takes featuring slow-panning road-side scenery, a number of contributors, framed almost like witnesses, describe a series of horrifying acts of racial violence and discrimination, referring most frequently to one incident that took place in the same year of filming in which a young black man was lynched by three white supremacists. The effect is distinct: the viewer listens to this testimony, then is forced to sit with it, staring upon the lands in which these injustices were and are perpetrated. Simple but effective, Akerman could have chosen many ways to structure a film around the American South. The one she choses is striking.
Akerman's SOUTH is a crushingly effective look at racial violence in the deep south of the United States. The project seems to have morphed during filming - my understanding is she was doing a general profile of the South when William Byrd, Jr. was lynched in eastern Texas, leading her to reorient the focus on the documentary. In her typical style, she doesn't insert herself into the documentary, content to be an observer and to allow interview subjects to tell their story uninterrupted. She also presents long, contemplative shots of the landscape that are often loaded with additional ominous meaning - a pair of shots of beautiful old-growth trees is recontextualized immediately as an elderly African-American woman explains that you…
There wasn't as much lynching after I was born as they say there was before I was born.
Chantal Akerman doesn't need any narration to get her point across with talking heads like this.
Hardly informative, to the point where it feels disrespectful. More time is spent on the landscapes and neighborhoods than is spent on the man murdered in a hate crime. This was infuriating to watch. The points I do give it are merited only by what relatively little content the participants were allowed to add to the film by the director. Very unfortunate.
Difficult to imagine any other filmmaker making this, which is often the ultimate mark of a great artist. Deeply affecting and perhaps my favorite Akerman to date.
Director Chantal Akerman had planned to produce a meditation on the American South but a few days before filming, James Byrd, Jr., a Black man, was severely beaten, murdered and dragged behind a truck for three miles in Jasper, Texas. Her provocative film looks at the crime and its effect on the primarily poor and Black community.
A portrait of darkness in the American South after the grim killing of James Byrd Jr.
There’s bittersweet moments of familial strength and faith in the church, later contrasted with a sociologist’s explanation of white supremacist growth through church infiltration. The deniability to hold white supremacists (and specifically their leaders) accountable is incredibly frustrating; to in turn use anarchist tactics for racist ends is horrifically disgusting and infuriating. Undeniably there is still a documentable hierarchy in white supremacist organizations... so they are not fully decentralized thankfully. Their ultimately fascist goals lead to authoritarian ends regardless of what methods they use to achieve it anyways.
Earlier on, the sober testimony of the sheriff only serves to emphasize how useless cops are.…
the police are literally... so blind. every doc I watch that has to do with racial inequality, esp at the hands of a racially motivated crime, the police just continuously prove how useless and delusional they are to black people and the terrors they face while living in america. sickening.
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