Southern flavor adds zest

There is something about the South that feels beautiful and old, a weariness of soul and mind ground into its society by 200 years of a slow-simmer lifestyle. This week, as the documentary world again migrates south to celebrate the wonder of reality, it will take time off from the hustle and bustle of celebrating the best in new docs to take a close look at important Southern films in a series entitled “Going Home: Southern family and the longing to belong.”

Macky Alston, Full Frame’s chosen curator for the 2005 “Southern Sidebar,” an annual feature of the festival, has chosen three films to be screened this year: Family Name, Alston’s own journey into the meaning and the history of his family’s last name; Southern Comfort, a glorious exploration of life focusing on one transsexual southerner; and Time Indefinite, a narrated hodgepodge of home movies that somehow meshes perfectly to produce truths of life, love and family. Each film is different, yet similar. Below the surface they each bear the insignia of southern life.

Alston says the selection process was prolonged but relatively easy. He originally sought a film with a strong feeling of black heritage that dealt with the concepts of family and home but had trouble finding anything he thought merited inclusion in the festival. Not wanting to abandon the encompassing theme of family, Alston eventually stumbled upon Southern Comfort, by filmmaker Kate Davis. He says it was “like a revelation; its themes [were] so central to southern family life.” Soon he noticed the similar themes recurring in both his and Davis’ work, and realized that Ross McElwee’s Time Indefinite, the film that originally inspired Alston to work in documentary, would make a natural third selection.

Given the southern focus of their films, it seems counterintuitive that all three directors are residents of the Northeast. While McElwee and Alston have North Carolina lineages to draw upon, Davis feels that having no emotional connection to the South actually helped her capture the idiosyncrasies of the region.

“It really helps as a filmmaker to be one step outside your subjects [and] your subjects’ environment—it feels like I have a certain [amount of] respect to tell the story,” she says. Though Davis’ film focuses on one man’s struggle in rural Georgia, she is quick to note that to her surprise Southern Comfort has ended up being regarded as a more universal “portrait of the South.” What shouldn’t be so surprising, given her status as visitor instead of resident, is the degree to which the lifestyle of the south shines through her film. Every minutia of culture seems to be bottled and fronted; each aspect of southern lifestyle dutifully recorded.

McElwee’s relationship with the South is significantly more personal and therefore feels more complex. His film, Time Indefinite, sees the region taking on a personality all its own, helping him through a tremendously emotional period marked with death and tragedy. It is never quite obvious what parts of McElwee’s work are southern, perhaps because his own history doesn’t lead him to focus on the tiny details so immediately apparent to Davis’ camera.

“Everybody's South is different,” remarked Alston, “and it's a critical player in the formation of our identities.” This weekend, three unique southern identities will flicker from projection rooms, each bearing the soulful drawl of a history grown in cotton fields and ripened under decades of searing sunlight.