Q&A with "C.S.A." director Kevin Willmott
following his movie "Confederate States of America"
When: Friday, March 10, 2006, 9:30 p.m.
Where: Liberty Hall, 644 Mass., Lawrence
Cost: $5 - $7
Age limit: All ages
Categories: Film, Discussions
Description: Lawrence filmmaker Kevin Willmott's feature film "C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America" will be making its local theatrical debut. The film follows the fictional first American showing of a BBC documentary which imagines what American history would be like had the South won the Civil War.
The movie screens Friday at 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. A Q&A session with Willmott occurs immediately following the 8 p.m. showing. He and other contributors to the film will be on stage from 6 to 7:45 p.m. Friday for the KU film department’s reception.
Willmott will also answer audience questions following the 2, 7:10 and 9:40 p.m. screenings scheduled for Saturday.
From the KU film dept.: Inspired by his belief that Americans, including himself, know too little of the history of slavery and racism, Willmott’s film reconstructs U.S. history and presents it as a British TV documentary being aired in America. The faux broadcast is peppered with commercials featuring products for a society practicing slavery, such as a Home Shopping Network to buy slaves.
IFC Films bought “CSA” when it was shown at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, drawing large crowds for its showing, and Spike Lee offered to lend his name as executive producer.
Liberty Hall showed the film before it went to Sundance. Since the film festival, Willmott and his producer, Rick Cowan of Kansas City, Mo., have edited “CSA” for IFC’s national release. Cowan said, “It looks and sounds better than something anyone has seen. We feel it was drastically re-cut to help build to the climax.”
Liberty Hall has scheduled the film to run through March 16, with four showings each on Saturday and Sunday (2:10, 4:30, 7:10 and 9:40 p.m.) and three shows Monday through Thursday (4:30, 7:10 and 9:40 p.m.).
On March 30, “CSA” will open in Salina. The film will have a limited three-day release in Augusta beginning April 14. In addition, Wichita will have the film released in one of the Warren Theaters at a date yet to be determined. “CSA” is currently showing in about 55 theatres nationwide.
Since the film’s national release on Feb. 15, “CSA” has been reviewed by film critics from coast to coast.
San Francisco Chronicle critic Mike LaSalle described “CSA” as “a brilliant and irresistible counterfactual overview of American history. ... The film adopts an outlandish thesis and takes it as far as the imagination can ride it. Part of the film’s fun is in agreeing with Willmott’s guesses and conclusions, and part of the fun is in arguing with him ...”
Los Angeles Times movie reviewer Kenneth Turan wrote: “(‘CSA’) provocatively presents the world as it would be if the South had won the Civil War and slavery persisted to this day in a Confederate union that extended from sea to shining sea, a world that, in a savage twist, is closer to the one we actually live in than we might imagine.”
In Salon magazine, Andrew OHehir wrote: “Willmott, who teaches film at the University of Kansas, has been piecing together ‘CSA’ for years, and its central idea goes back almost two decades. ... It’s an uneven film, but also both a hilarious and shocking one; it may leave you weeping with laughter one minute and wanting to storm out of the theater the next.”
Boston Globe critic Ty Burr: “At times, Willmott’s a more skillful polemicist than he is a filmmaker. The fake D.W. Griffith silent movie that re-creates Lincoln’s capture is witheringly exact, but parodies of movies from the ’40s and ’50s aren’t as convincing. The advertisements that pepper the ‘broadcast’ are a mixed bag, too, with the worst approaching the smug obviousness of ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits. Who’d really believe there could be such products as Darky Toothpaste or a restaurant chain called Coon Chicken Inn?
“Well, uh, we should. Willmott waits until the very end of his tour of the supposedly alternative past before dropping his final bombshell: Until the post-World War II era, those were all real products.”
Event posted March 9, 2006
Last updated March 10, 2006
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