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Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, has established an enviable track record with Oscar voters, earning a Best Documentary Feature nomination last year with Crip Camp, and a win in 2020 for American Factory. It\u2019s back in the Oscar race this year with Descendant, a Netflix documentary directed by Margaret Brown. <\/p>\n
The award-winning film centers on the descendants of the Clotilda, the last slave ship known to have entered the U.S., which sailed into Mobile Bay, Alabama on the eve of the Civil War.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Obamas\u2019 and the Netflix platform is just crucial because\u2026 these kinds of histories are being obscured and obfuscated and denied,\u201d Brown said during an appearance at Deadline\u2019s Contenders Film: Documentary event. \u201cAnd to have that kind of support is in defiance to those who would not like these stories to be told.\u201d<\/p>\n
In part, the documentary explores efforts to locate the vestiges of the Clotilda, which was sunk immediately after discharging its human cargo on a stretch of the Mobile River, around 1860. After a search of more than 150 years, the vessel was finally located alongside land owned by the Maeher family, descendants of the man who had bankrolled the illegal expedition to import slaves (the practice had been outlawed in 1808).<\/p>\n
\u201cI never really thought when I was making the film that it was important that the ship be found,\u201d said Brown, a native of Mobile. \u201cBut then when they did find the ship and everything that came after that, I was very glad they did because as Kamau [Sadiki, diver and slave shipwreck investigator] says in the movie, it\u2019s this tangible piece of evidence. It\u2019s a very important artifact, and it\u2019s also an emotional artifact. And I think that opened up the story in all these ways that I was just not prepared for.\u201d<\/p>\n
The primary focus of Descendant, in many respects, is the fate of Africatown \u2014 the neighborhood in North Mobile founded by Clotilda survivors \u2014 and those who trace their lineage to those survivors. The historic community has been bisected by a freeway and is penned in by heavy industry located on land still owned by the Maeher family. Toxins spew into the air, a suspected cause of high rates of cancer and other diseases among residents of the area. There is the strong feeling that hereditary white power still negatively impacts the lives of Black people in Africatown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you drive into Africatown the sense of where you are is very palpable. It\u2019s sort of a small community and it\u2019s very residential. There\u2019s smells of the industry that surrounds,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s very loud. There\u2019s lots of noise pollution. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s in the soil. For five years when I was making the film, I was thinking about how do I translate what this feels like to be here. \u2026 When you\u2019re in the graveyard, which is a historic place \u2026 there\u2019s an asphalt plant next door that gives you a headache if you\u2019re there at certain points of the day when it\u2019s super-hot from the fumes. So, it was really about translating that in a palpable and emotional way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Check out the panel video and view this article at Deadline<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finding The Slave Ship At Center Of \u2018Descendant\u2019 Became An Unexpected \u201cEmotional Artifact\u201d, Director Says \u2013 Contenders Documentary: Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, has established an enviable track record with Oscar voters, earning a Best Documentary Feature nomination last year with Crip Camp, and a win in 2020 for
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