“This is the place where you can come and raise your own family to see how it all came about,” Dr. Rev. Norvel Goff can be heard telling his son about Georgetown, South Carolina in “After Sherman.” He’s speaking generally as one of many voices largely left unidentified in the film made by Jon Sesrie Goff, but his inevitably rises to prominence for any number of reasons – a leader in the community and a hard-won eloquence owing to his decades spent as preacher, as well as a clarity about continuing to live in a place where his ancestors once lived as slaves that eludes his son, the tension of which yields a fascinating film.
A fittingly fragmented family portrait that extends well beyond the Goffs to include all Africans who were cut off from their roots by being brought to America on slave ships, “After Sherman” takes its title from the moment a group of Black reverends approached William Sherman in 1865 asking for emancipation for anyone enslaved at the end of the Civil War. The request was granted, but Sesrie wonders what freedom means for people who were resettled without any choice in the matter and left only with deepening their ties to the region that holds so much pain when starting from scratch appears possibly more dicey. Sesrie and editor Blair Seab McClendon shrewdly piece together this deep sense of disconnection as scenes of vast amounts of open land and property unaffected by human activity suggest no limitations while the cacophony of voices laid over the frames to tell another story as members of the community whose families have grown up Gullah for generations speak to a tortured history where the blood and tears that have already been shed have hardened a resistance to leave.
In fact, a community has solidified over time as certain traditions have been passed down, from the geechee language to herbal remedies and some land has changed hands. Yet Goff arrives back in the town where he spent some of his youth when the beachfront property has been targeted by developers, willing to pay now yet nonetheless severing the locals from all they’ve built over time, and points out other ways that a vicious cycle has continued when Kodak, one of the area’s largest employers, was successfully cited for pay discrimination. At least a few in “After Sherman” contend that racism is no more fervent in South Carolina than it is in more theoretically progressive places up north, but that notion and other equivocations are tested when the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston was invaded by a white supremacist who took the lives of nine in the congregation including its minister. When one of the film’s strongest early sequences illustrates the crucial role the church played in creating unity across the Carolina coast as it drew parishioners who might take solace in Bible verses but found faith in the opportunity to collectively unburden themselves in a safe space, the implications of the already unfathomable tragedy of the 2015 shooting are somehow even greater.
Like the community it depicts, “After Sherman” never is weighed down by history though every corner is touched by it and the ability to carry on is admirable, but Sesrie is right to question it when holding on to the world they know may prevent imagining anything else. The filmmaker can’t be accused of the same in breaking up the narrative around the area, both formally and historically to convey the push-and-pull of a home where it may never feel as if the residents ever own the keys. Still, what Sesrie is able to unlock is mighty powerful.
“After Sherman” will screen at True/False on March 5th at 5:45 pm at the Blue Note and March 6th at 3:30 pm at the Missouri Theater. It will next screen at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on March 7th at 8:20 am at Metro #3 and March 9th at 4 pm at Fiesta #2.