We are so thrilled to see Jon-Sesrie Goff’s film After Sherman at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival! Producer Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich is a UnionDocs Fellow and we are delighted to be a presentation partner for the screenings. The screening will take place on JUNE 13 at 6PM at Village East. Hailed as a filmmaker who “effectively bottles the energy generated when history collides with memory and lets it resound in his feature to stirring effect” by Marshall Shaffer in The Playlist, this is a film you don’t want to miss!

You can reach the land by dirt road, or by boat if you sail down the Santee River towards the Atlantic. This plot of land has been in my family since the 1860s when it was purchased by my ancestors after emancipation. The Hopswee plantation, where they were once enslaved still stands a mile away, now a wedding destination.  The land presents unanswered questions about ownership, belonging, citizenship, and history. Its transformation from marsh to the mainline of American rice and wealth was predicated on the skilled labor and ingenuity of Africans, primarily from the rice coast of western Africa. The fields were abandoned after Emancipation when the formerly enslaved left for other trades. The land’s potential still exists. One day I will inherit this land. And I will inherit all of this history and presence that comes with it.

–Jon-Sesrie Goff