Movies from an Independent Confederacy

I think he was saying that in an OTL with a CSA that the USA would have reconquered it before a substantial movie industry could have developed. So calm down with the "ignorant assumption" talk. Believe it or not it is up for debate on this site whether or not the CSA could make it to the 20th century as a nation.
That's clearly not what he was taking exception to; the idea that southerners would be uniquely unable to comprehend moving pictures is most definitely an ignorant assumption, whether or not one thinks an independent Confederacy could last that long.
 
Even poor Latin American countries produced films in the 1910s and 1920s, so as long as the Confederacy survives that long it will without a doubt have some film output.

That's clearly not what he was taking exception to; the idea that southerners would be uniquely unable to comprehend moving pictures is most definitely an ignorant assumption, whether or not one thinks an independent Confederacy could last that long.

It sounded more like they wouldn't be able to understand film technology.
 
Considering the near deification of the founding fathers currently, why would the CSA be even more into its founding war than OTL? I can see a few prestige films being made about the Civil War, but I can't see it being a bigger genre than OTL. I can count on one hand how many movies about the revolution I've seen. I can see numerous miniseries and TV series about it though.

Their tastes are probably strikingly conventional and most of their films wouldn't be too out of place in OTL
 
I think some posts here are leaning a bit too hard on the slavery angle; it would probably be omnipresent, but as like a background cultural assumption rather than the central point of every movie. There would be movies about romance, war, tragedy, history, crime, comedy, and so on.

Yeah, I suppose except for historical movies, anything not a historical film made more than 3 decades after independence would just be... movies and we are looking too hard at slavery.

I suppose by that point (assume slavery is baked in ideologically as well as economically), we'd see slaves in various movies, but maybe as extras or supporting cast and the fact that they are slaves aren't really the biggest part of the story.

For example, in many OTL movies, we have stuff like eating, office politics, favoritism, and pollution. But most of those films are not about consumption of food, how one the paperwork master gets promotions over colleagues who are nicer, the concept of picking people who like you to have better positions, or smog. I bet there is a film somewhere where there is a scene of a zillion cars forming a smog cloud... and that's simply setting creation not the plot.
 
speaking of possible filming locations, it's a pretty well-known fact that at least part of why Southern California became the epicenter of the American film industry is because the weather is almost always pretty good there (i say "there" instead of "here" this time since, as i'm typing this, i'm still on vacation in Hawaii :p ), usually having clear skies and reasonable temperatures which make filming easier in and of itself--it's why the Universal Studios Backlot has seen so much use, including for non-Universal films such as Disney-made Princess Diaries and Pirates of the Caribbean. if we want to truly analyze what Confederate media would be like, we should consider what parts of the country have good weather comparable to that (i'm sure most people participating in this thread know that the South in general is pretty humid, which would be a factor against alot of it since outdoor filming could be put on hold by sudden rain) and how that could affect their film industry. Confederate geography would play a big part in this, such as if they managed to get their Arizona territory which could make filming in the desert an option beyond just using it as an on-site location for Westerns.

i agree concerning the point of "we're focusing too much on slavery" here. while that was pretty much the be-all end-all for the Confederacy's existence IOTL, in the extremely unlikely case that they would actually win the Civil War, i doubt it would become the absolute defining feature of their media. i don't doubt that they'd remain a white supremacist hellhole for the majority of their history through to OTL's present-day (after that, who knows?) but plenty of OTL states were also extremely racist IOTL but it was more casual--you'll notice that alot of Imperialism Age-media remarks on stuff like non-whites and colonialism in ways that are extremely racist by today's standard, but it's not the heart of the story (for example, The Sign of the Four, one of the earlier Sherlock Holmes stories, describes an Andaman islander in such a way but it's only incidental to the story, and certainly was just a product of its time rather than Doyle being racist). there might be outdated, minstrel show-style caricatures of black Africans being common and accepted in media for a longer period, but that's probably about it rather than the moral of 99.9% of Confederate media being "the natural place of blacks is working our cotton fields"
 
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So where will Confederate Westerns be filmed? Dallas? San Antonio? Maybe even El Paso when real desert conditions are required?...
 
So where will Confederate Westerns be filmed? Dallas? San Antonio? Maybe even El Paso when real desert conditions are required?...
even if they don't get alot of territory, there's nothing to say that Confederate filmmakers wouldn't be allowed anywhere outside their country unless there was a huge embargo/blockade against the Confederacy as a whole for whatever reason, like a North Korea-style thing, or unless there's a war going on. if they needed a particular location that didn't exist within Confederate borders they'd just go outside the country.
 
even if they don't get alot of territory, there's nothing to say that Confederate filmmakers wouldn't be allowed anywhere outside their country unless there was a huge embargo/blockade against the Confederacy as a whole for whatever reason, like a North Korea-style thing, or unless there's a war going on. if they needed a particular location that didn't exist within Confederate borders they'd just go outside the country.

True, but *if possible* filmmakers do seem to prefer to film in their own country. There's a reason why so many Hollywood movies set in Mexico were filmed in southern California.
 
Well, among other things the Confederates win this battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Glorieta_Pass It may be unlikely, but some would say a Confederate victory overall was unlikely, too..

The Union had far more manpower that the CSA which is going to be telling in small population territories like AZ. To put it bluntly there are almost zero locals to help them which means it comes down to manpower and logistics which is a fight the Union will win every time. The CSA would have a hard enough time keeping TN not talking about taking any Union Territory.
 
What sorts of movies might an independent CSA produce early in the era of film? Are they popular enough to create a rival to Hollywood, perhaps create a niche like Bollywood, or fail spectacularly altogether?
"Rise with the wind"
 
So where will Confederate Westerns be filmed? Dallas? San Antonio? Maybe even El Paso when real desert conditions are required?...

Texas. Or *Oklahoma (which might be named [insert here name of one Confederate Founding Father] TTL).

at best, I always assumed Draka-style emancipation-in-name-only.

Or they might do like OTL, with sharecroping and peonage to replace slavery, further enabling the control of the oligarchy on the lower classes.

Of course, the Army might have some training up with the frequent agrairian revolts.
 
One thing that would be interesting to see would be a riff on Intolerance directed by TTL D.W. Griffith, though this time around it's about principled rebellions against unjust authority. Cut between parallel storylines of David against King Saul, William 'I have always honored the King of Spain' I of Orange and the rebellion of the Netherlands, George Washington and the War for Independence, and Robert E. Lee and the Second War for Independence. Opening act establishes the protagonists' loyalty, second act is them struggling to reconcile their honor with the abuses of the authorities, ending with them making their fateful decision to take up arms, and in the third act triumphing with strong notes of divine favor. It would be a massive film, probably like four hours long, but quite a directorial accomplishment if it worked.
 
I feel the idea that every Confederacy movie would be about the value of slavery is like guessing every OTL American movie would have been about segregation. The presence would be more subtle, unless the situation was so unstable that you're in a "propaganda in the theaters" scenario anyway.

I'm not sure westerns will be as big a genre in the Confederacy, due to a lack of west. The events that informed the American Western mostly took place after the Civil War. The only real 'west' will be west Texas, where the Anglos were getting beat up pretty hard by the Comanches.

Too, I don't think the western as we know it would necessarily appeal to the kind of people who could finance a movie in the Confederacy. While today's American South, I think one can say, has definitely leaned into the rugged individualism idea, in the antebellum South it was viewed as a ruinous Yankee vice, like commerce. On the other hand, they fuckin' loved knights. Walter Scott was a big deal in antebellum Dixie, they had their own little Ren Faires and everything. And, unlike the settings needed for Westerns, Knight movies can be easily filmed in really any forested area of the Confederacy.

Although, one possible cousin of the Western: Crackers! If the Confederate film industry does end up in Florida, that will undoubtedly raise Florida's cinematic profile - consider how many OTL films are set in California. Maybe in that scenario, the Florida Cracker film has a larger slice of the industry (I mean, it's basically none OTL so).

Finally, I think OTL proves that being a racist is no bar to understanding film. D. W. Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl, etc.
 
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