C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America | |
---|---|
Directed by | Kevin Willmott |
Written by | Kevin Willmott |
Produced by | Rick Cowan Ollie Hall Sean Blake Victoria Goetz Benjamin Meade Andrew Herwitz Marvin Voth |
Starring | Rupert Pate Evamarii Johnson Larry Peterson LaMont Collins, Jr. |
Narrated by | Charles Frank |
Cinematography | Matt Jacobson |
Edited by | Sean Blake David Gramly |
Music by | Erich L. Timkar Kelly Werts |
Production company | |
Distributed by | IFC Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 89 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $744,165 [1] |
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 American mockumentary film written and directed by Kevin Willmott.
It is an account of an alternate history, wherein the Confederacy wins the American Civil War and establishes a new Confederate States of America that incorporates the majority of the Western Hemisphere, including the former contiguous United States, the "Golden Circle", the Caribbean, and South America. Primarily detailing significant political and cultural events of Confederate history from its founding until the early 2000s, this viewpoint is used to satirize real issues and events, and to shed light on the continuing existence of racism against Black Americans.
The film premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, and was released in the United States on February 15, 2006, by IFC Films. It received positive reviews.
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is set in an alternate history where Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation failed. Confederate President Jefferson Davis takes the opportunity to secure British and French aid for the Confederacy, allowing Confederate forces to win the Battle of Gettysburg, besiege Washington, D.C., and capture the White House a few months later. As a result, the Confederacy takes over all of the United States and slavery there survives into the present day and other historical events are affected accordingly.
The film is presented as if it were a British Broadcasting Services (BBS) (a parody of the British Broadcasting Corporation) documentary being broadcast on a CSA television channel in San Francisco, California. It opens with a fictional disclaimer suggesting that censorship came close to preventing the broadcast, that its point of view might not coincide with that of the network, and that it might not be suitable for viewing by children and "servants". It purports to disagree with an orthodox Confederate interpretation of American history.
The film portrays two historians: Sherman Hoyle, a conservative Southerner (a parody of Shelby Foote); and Patricia Johnson, a black Canadian, as talking heads, providing commentary.
The documentary hosts also follow Confederate politician and Democratic presidential hopeful John Ambrose Fauntroy V (the great-grandson of one of the founders of the C.S.A.) during his primary campaign as he faces challenges over alleged black ancestry. Narration explains fake historical newsreel footage, which is either reenacted or compiled of genuine archival footage dubbed with fictional narration.
Racialist advertisements appear as commercial breaks, including consumer products, television programs, and films, all aimed at white slave-owning families. Text during the film's epilogue note that parts of the alternate timeline are based on real history and that some of the racist products depicted such as Uncle Ben's and Aunt Jemima actually existed at the time of the film's production (both products were rebranded in 2020 following the George Floyd protests [2] [3] ).
Kevin Wilmott began production on the film with a funding from the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) and wrote its first draft in 1997. [4]
Willmott, who had earlier written a screenplay about abolitionist John Brown, told interviewers he was inspired to write the story after seeing an episode of Ken Burns' 1990 television documentary The Civil War . [5] It was produced by Hodcarrier Films.
The film was filmed in Humboldt, Newton and Lawrence cities in Kansas, with a cast and crew coming from the U.S. states of Kansas, Missouri and Iowa as well as Colombia. [6]
The film grossed $744,165 worldwide in limited release. [1]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 80% based on reviews from 66 critics. [7] On Metacritic the film has a score of 62 out of 100 based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews". [8] Most critics were intrigued by the film's premise, but some found the execution to be lacking primarily due to a low budget. [9] [10] [11] In 2018 James Berardinelli wrote: "The movie is ultimately more interesting in satire than the presentation of a legitimate alternate timeline. This doesn't invalidate C.S.A.'s approach but it limits its effectiveness as a sort of Twilight Zone look at the last 150 years." [12]
An earlier version of the film premiered on February 21, 2003, at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas, [13] while the film premiered for the second time, at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004.
In January 2004, after the film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, IFC Films acquired the distribution rights to the film in the United States. [14]
The film received a limited theatrical release in some Southern cities on October 7, 2005, and later received a wide theatrical release on February 15, 2006. [15]
The film was released on DVD by IFC Films (distributed by Genius Products) on August 8, 2006.
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
In the 1860s, the Copperheads, also known as Peace Democrats, were a faction of the Democratic Party in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
The history of the United States from 1849 to 1865 was dominated by the tensions that led to the American Civil War between North and South, and the bloody fighting in 1861–1865 that produced Northern victory in the war and ended slavery. At the same time industrialization and the transportation revolution changed the economics of the Northern United States and the Western United States. Heavy immigration from Western Europe shifted the center of population further to the North.
The Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, was fought on April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River in Henning, Tennessee, during the American Civil War. The battle ended with Confederate soldiers commanded by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest massacring Union soldiers attempting to surrender. Military historian David J. Eicher concluded: "Fort Pillow marked one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history."
The Great War: American Front is the first alternate history novel in the Great War trilogy by Harry Turtledove. It is the second part of Turtledove's Southern Victory series of novels. It takes the Southern Victory Series from 1914 to 1915.
The Confederate Secret Service refers to any of a number of official and semi-official secret service organizations and operations performed by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Some of the organizations were directed by the Confederate government, others operated independently with government approval, while still others were either completely independent of the government or operated with only its tacit acknowledgment.
The trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War was the scene of the major military operations west of the Mississippi River. The area is often thought of as excluding the states and territories bordering the Pacific Ocean, which formed the Pacific coast theater of the American Civil War (1861–1865).
At the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Kansas was the newest U.S. state, admitted just months earlier in January. The state had formally rejected slavery by popular vote and vowed to fight on the side of the Union, though ideological divisions with neighboring Missouri, a slave state, had led to violent conflict in previous years and persisted for the duration of the war.
Kevin Willmott is an Academy Award-winning American film director and screenwriter. He is known for work focusing on black issues including writing and directing Ninth Street,C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, and Bunker Hill.
Since his death in 1865, Abraham Lincoln has been an iconic American figure depicted, usually favorably or heroically, in many forms. Lincoln has often been portrayed by Hollywood, almost always in a flattering light. He has been depicted in a wide range of forms including alternative timelines, animation, documentary, small cameos, and fictionalized interpretations.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the American Civil War:
Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 U.S. 243 (1864), is a United States Supreme Court case, involving a former congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, who had violated an Army order against the public expression of sympathy for the Confederate States and their cause. Vallandigham was tried before a military tribunal by Major General Ambrose E. Burnside for treason after he delivered an incendiary speech at Mount Vernon; he then appealed the tribunal's verdict to the Supreme Court, arguing that he as a civilian could not be tried before a military tribunal.
Events from the year 1862 in the United States.
American Civil War alternate histories are alternate history fiction that focuses on the Civil War ending differently or not occurring. The American Civil War is a popular point of divergence in English-language alternate history fiction. The most common variants detail the victory and survival of the Confederate States. Less common variants include a Union victory under different circumstances from actual history, resulting in a different postwar situation; black American slaves freeing themselves by revolt without waiting for Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; a direct British and/or French intervention in the war; the survival of Lincoln during John Wilkes Booth's assassination attempt; a retelling of historical events with fantasy elements inserted; the Civil War never breaking out and a peaceful compromise being reached; and secret history tales. The point of divergence in such a story can be a "natural, realistic" event, such as one general making a different decision, or one sentry detecting an enemy invasion unlike in reality. It can also be an "unnatural" fantasy/science fiction plot device such as time travel, which usually takes the form of someone bringing modern weapons or hindsight knowledge into the past. Still another related variant is a scenario of a Civil War that breaks out at a different time from 1861 and under different circumstances.
The American Civil War bibliography comprises books that deal in large part with the American Civil War. There are over 60,000 books on the war, with more appearing each month. There is no complete bibliography to the war; the largest guide to books is over 40 years old and lists over 6,000 titles selected by leading scholars. Many specialized topics such as Abraham Lincoln, women, and medicine have their own lengthy bibliographies. The books on major campaigns typically contain their own specialized guides to the sources and literature. The most comprehensive guide to the historiography annotates over a thousand titles.
The Confederate States of America (1861–1865) only had one president, Jefferson Davis. In various American Civil War alternate histories where the Confederacy won the American Civil War and continued its existence, various people have served in the office of the presidency of the Confederacy.