Sherman’s March (40th Anniversary)
Landmark documentary in which filmmaker Ross McElwee sets out to document Sherman’s Civil War campaign, but veers into a personal quest for love in the American South.
Armed with a 16mm camera and a grant to make a documentary about the lingering aftermath of William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march from Georgia to the sea, documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee gets sidetracked. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Ross shifts his attention from the historical to the personal, namely to the battlefield of modern love.
A generous and humanistic portrait of several remarkable women that Ross meets along the way, Sherman’s March sketches its characters with novelistic sensitivity: Pat, an aspiring actress with a soft spot for Burt Reynolds; Claudia, a roller-skating interior designer; Jackie, the activist whose anti-nuclear advocacy dovetails with Ross’s deepest fears; and above all, Charleen Swansea, Ross’s mentor and a one-woman Greek choir of unsolicited romantic counsel.
The grand and sultry Sherman’s March, now restored in 4K, is an incomparable masterclass in first-person filmmaking that was a foreshadowing of everything from Michael Moore to reality TV.
Please note that this film is English spoken and not subtitled.
Special: Introduction Wouter Greven
Before the screening of Wednesday 26 August, our Head of Programming will introduce the film by exploring the significance of McElwee’s body of work for the medium of documentary.
