C.S.A. : Confederates States of America the film
- Thread starter ConfederateFly
- Start date
It is not the same as the book of the same name. The Director is Black. It should come out on DVD or VHS in Fall 2004. There are pics on the website of Lance Armstrong on the moon with a Confederate Flag in the background and a different pic has 3 men wearing shirts that say CBI(Confederate Bureau of Investigation) www.csathemovie.com
Confederate States of America (2004)
Starring: Evamarii Johnson, Jon Niccum
Director: Kevin Willmott
Synopsis: Satirical mockumentary about slavery in America that shows what could have happened if the South had won the Civil War.
Runtime: 91 minutes
MPAA Rating:
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Indie
Confederate States of America (2004)What fate would have befallen the United States had the South won the Civil War? That is the provocative question writer/director Kevin Wilmott attempts to answer in his brilliantly conceived faux documentary, CSA: Confederate States of America. While at 91 minutes that include an incendiary collection of phony commercials, this deadly serious satire continues long after it's made its point, there is no denying its power to provoke thought and, hopefully, a dialogue among the races in this country that is long overdue.
Modeled after a Ken Burns-style documentary, Wilmott presents his fictional doc as a British product making its controversial TV debut in the Confederate State of America. This is a country where the Gray side proved triumphant, where the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln, instead of dying by an assassin's bullet at Ford's Theater, fled in surrender to Canada. Slavery is so enshrined that slaves are bought and sold over the Internet, the country sided with Hitler during World War II, and there's an ongoing cold war with Canada, the country to which escaping slaves and abolitionists have traditionally fled. CSA's power extends to Central and South America where a system of apartheid separates the white, North American ruling class from the region's indigenous population. And in the 21st century, CSA's women still don't have the right to vote.
Wilmott leaves nothing out of his perfectly realized re-creation of this alternate history. As talking-head historians explain the events of the past 140 years, there are archival photos, old newspaper accounts and editorial cartoons, and dramatized scenes. There are clips from a fiction D.W. Griffith movie, The Hunt for Dishonest Abe and '50s-era sitcom, Leave It to Beulah. Interspersed throughout are ads for such products as Darkie toothpaste, Coon Chicken Inn and others, most of which were at one time actual products sold in the United States.
At a time when so many people still defend the Confederate flag and insist on putting the Civil War in terms of "states' rights," CSA explicates the full implications of those positions. In satirizing history, Wilmott lays down a gauntlet, indicting ingrained attitudes and prejudices, and daring us all to do something about it.
Confederate States of America (2004)
Starring: Evamarii Johnson, Jon Niccum
Director: Kevin Willmott
Synopsis: Satirical mockumentary about slavery in America that shows what could have happened if the South had won the Civil War.
Runtime: 91 minutes
MPAA Rating:
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Indie
Confederate States of America (2004)What fate would have befallen the United States had the South won the Civil War? That is the provocative question writer/director Kevin Wilmott attempts to answer in his brilliantly conceived faux documentary, CSA: Confederate States of America. While at 91 minutes that include an incendiary collection of phony commercials, this deadly serious satire continues long after it's made its point, there is no denying its power to provoke thought and, hopefully, a dialogue among the races in this country that is long overdue.
Modeled after a Ken Burns-style documentary, Wilmott presents his fictional doc as a British product making its controversial TV debut in the Confederate State of America. This is a country where the Gray side proved triumphant, where the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln, instead of dying by an assassin's bullet at Ford's Theater, fled in surrender to Canada. Slavery is so enshrined that slaves are bought and sold over the Internet, the country sided with Hitler during World War II, and there's an ongoing cold war with Canada, the country to which escaping slaves and abolitionists have traditionally fled. CSA's power extends to Central and South America where a system of apartheid separates the white, North American ruling class from the region's indigenous population. And in the 21st century, CSA's women still don't have the right to vote.
Wilmott leaves nothing out of his perfectly realized re-creation of this alternate history. As talking-head historians explain the events of the past 140 years, there are archival photos, old newspaper accounts and editorial cartoons, and dramatized scenes. There are clips from a fiction D.W. Griffith movie, The Hunt for Dishonest Abe and '50s-era sitcom, Leave It to Beulah. Interspersed throughout are ads for such products as Darkie toothpaste, Coon Chicken Inn and others, most of which were at one time actual products sold in the United States.
At a time when so many people still defend the Confederate flag and insist on putting the Civil War in terms of "states' rights," CSA explicates the full implications of those positions. In satirizing history, Wilmott lays down a gauntlet, indicting ingrained attitudes and prejudices, and daring us all to do something about it.
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Jesse said:
Even satire is supposed to have even a tiny basis in reality. It is not implausibility of the movie which lost my interest, it is impossiblity of it.
Beck Reilly said:
Possibly. But I think that is the whole point of the film. It is impossible....but I think it is simply one man's interpretation of what could've been, through a satirical POV.
Beck Reilly said:
Satire is only supposed to have a "basis in reality" in the sense that it's satirizing something that actually exists in the real world (which I assume in this case would be things like racism and historical documentaries), but the fictional world used in the satire does not have to be remotely plausible. For example, think of "Gulliver's Travels", or "Airplane!"
NapoleonXIV
Banned
"...Slavery is so enshrined that slaves are bought and sold over the Internet, the country sided with Hitler during World War II..."
Why does that make the movie implausible?
Beck Reilly said:
Why does that make the movie implausible?
NapoleonXIV said:
1.) Slavery was becoming more and more economically unfeasible. Unless the planters cared to take a horribly nasty profit loss, which they wouldn't, slavery would have all but died (at least unofficially) by the turn of the century (end of the Nineteenth).
2.) By 1939, conditions in the world would have changed to the point that, even IF there was a WWII, which is neither impossible nor probable, there is zero chance that Hitler would have led Germany in the war. See many of CF's threads for discussions about this very same topic from myself and others.
The reasons many alternate-historians have the CSA siding with Hitler is b/c of political bias. Despite the racism of both systems, they have VERY little in common.
Beck Reilly said:
Not entirely sure about this. Slavery has been used by industrialised regimes from time to time - often on an appaling scale. Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR are classic examples of industrialised slavery (and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge used agrarien slavery). If the CSA went down some massive industrialsation programme (which it would have to do if it were to survive as a modern - if grotesque - nation), it's probable that it would have retained slavery, but in a USSR-type form.
NapoleonXIV
Banned
ktotwf said:Wow, its a good thing that someone has come along that will finally tell the masses that slavery is wrong! That is a message so rarely heard these days.
You are oversimplifyng just a little, yes?
What the movie seems to be saying, and what is still a controversial view in historical interpretation, is that the Confederacy was evil.
It difficult for most Americans (white or black I've found) to accept this on two levels. The first is to accept that it was Americans, our ancestors, who did this. However, our contemporary 'warts and all' view of our past prepares us for this. It means, really, no more than that we were no better than anyone else and worse than some at that time.
The second level is that as historians we have been trained to eschew such labels. This is a little harder to get over but still necessary. Most of us have little problem with finding Hitler and Stalin to be evil in the classic sense. Why should the Confederacy be any different?
Imajin,
It was worse than that. Lincoln was a semi-dictator; he put hundreds if not thousands of political opponents in Ft. LaFayette in New York Harbor. People at the time called it the "American Bastille." Lots of newspapers were shut down too.
And then we have Sherman. He was BAD.
It was worse than that. Lincoln was a semi-dictator; he put hundreds if not thousands of political opponents in Ft. LaFayette in New York Harbor. People at the time called it the "American Bastille." Lots of newspapers were shut down too.
And then we have Sherman. He was BAD.