But considering how the film is mainly about how easily Black history can be buried, forgotten, destroyed or literally steamrolled over, its unfocused, scattered tone may be intentional. Both the film and<\/em> its audience are looking for answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Director Jon-Sesrie Goff is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and arts administrator. This should tip you off on what to expect from After<\/em>, which cares less about linear structure and more about giving an abstract but captivating look at the people and area he came from. If anything, Goff creates a visual tone poem \u2014 complete with him adding some voice-over work \u2014 that still has familiar documentary components (talking-head interviews, scenes of rambling cinema verite, etc.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Goff concentrates on the coastal South, where the islands that stretched from Charleston, South Carolina to Florida\u2019s St. John\u2019s River (roughly 400,000 acres) became settlements for freed Black families during the Civil War. This order was issued by Union general William T. Sherman after meeting with several Black ministers, making sure their people properly got their 40 acres and a mule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goff spends a bulk of After<\/em> on the myriad, African Methodist Episcopal churches that are all over coastal South Carolina. The filmmaker definitely had a heavy church upbringing; he even splices in home-video footage of himself as a doo rag-wearing lad, showing the viewer the AME church where his dad, Norvel Goff, preaches. We also find out that Goff was a righteous civil-rights activist back in the day; when he was the former head of the Rochester NAACP, he even got a Kodak plant to stop discrimination on women and people of color and issue them a pay increase. Unfortunately, the elder Goff also had to keep hope flowing in the community, especially after the Charleston church shooting of 2015. (His wife \u2014 and Goff\u2019s mom \u2014 says he \u201chad to plan nine funerals.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the most part, After<\/em> is Goff artfully giving flowers to the \u201cwater people,\u201d those men and women of color who brought Gullah Geechee culture to the shores. (See Julie Dash\u2019s trailblazing 1991 debut Daughters of the Dust<\/em> for a more dramatic account of early Gullah settlers.) He also shows love to the contemporary generations who maintain an optimistic outlook (like Goff\u2019s old man) even during the most painful and prejudicial of times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, After Sherman<\/em> is a film full of bits and pieces about picking up the pieces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “After Sherman” begins an engagement at New York\u2019s DCTV Firehouse Cinema this Friday, and will have screenings in other cities this month<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/after-sherman2-1024x576.png\")
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As you would expect, it\u2019s been difficult for families to hold on to what was once owed to them. Land has been seized by modern resort developers and white folk who scoop it up at an auction. (One of the more harrowing sequences shows a tax auction which begins with a nonprofit spokesman pleading with attendees not to bid on an heir\u2019s property items and ends with a sista trying \u2014 and failing \u2014 to bid on her land.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nB<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n