REEL SOUTH

One El Paso filmmaker calls on her Indigenous and Mexican ancestors to explore the cyclical starvation of the Rio Grande river and the human and inhumane factors contributing to the disappearance of its culture and bounty.

In Southern Virginia, Black farmers like Cecil Shell balance their interests in honoring their tradition of tobacco farming against the onset of solar energy farms exploding across the region. Through Cecil, the film explores one rural county’s shifting economic interests and his own efforts to steward the community, including Black landowners, through changing times.

The site of the original settlement of the Cherokee, the Kituwah mound, was thought lost for centuries. In her moving retelling of the efforts to reclaim the tribe’s land, former Chief Joyce Dugan and fellow tribe members foreground the spiritual, emotional, and social impact of Kituwah’s legacy. This is the story of how the Cherokee finally took their “land back.”

Unrestricted access to beaches is a public right in Texas. But for the little known, magical, and untamed stretch of beach called Boca Chica, that right is curtailed when SpaceX takes flight. Boca Chica uncovers the mesmerizing beauty of this fragile coastline and the fight for free access for its longtime visitors whose memories and spirituality are rooted deep among the sandy shorelines.

A Black scientist brings together local Black farmers to combat the effects of climate change and create opportunities in Black agriculture for new generations in the Arkansas delta.

In a small Texas Panhandle town, a few things have remained constant– cowboys, high school football, conservative voters, and the family-owned weekly newspaper, The Canadian Record. Publisher and editor Laurie Ezzell Brown strives to keep the town’s paper of record and her family’s legacy alive despite an oil bust, a global pandemic, and a growing mistrust for all media and her own liberal column.

Georgetown University sold hundreds of enslaved people to stave off bankruptcy, scattering families across the South, never to see each other again. With the help of DNA databases, their descendants are reconnecting six generations later. “Finding Us” is a portrait of four descendants who are using their unique talents to regrow the family trees felled nearly two centuries ago.

In Springdale, Arkansas, migrants from the Marshall Islands gather to commemorate the 1946 bombing of Bikini Atoll and ask the questions: Why did the United States choose their islands and what are the ongoing impacts on their indigenous Pacific Island community? “In Exile” explores the nuclear legacy of the US in the Pacific and the lingering catastrophe in its wake.

Three community members in a rural Appalachian town experience illness after exposure to contamination from a nearby US Army Ammunition Plant. Due to the open burning of waste, the facility is considered the largest polluter in Virginia, releasing millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air, soil, and water each year. The film incorporates contaminants from the facility into 16mm film.

In 1971, one of the worst industrial tragedies in U.S. history shook rural Southeast Georgia. The victims were predominantly Black women, manufacturing trip flares for the Vietnam War. Over 50 years later, survivors and first responders shed new light on the bravery and sacrifice of that day, and a grassroots campaign seeks to award the victims with the Congressional Gold Medal.

In 1951, a little girl became mesmerized by a Christmas display window in downtown Louisville. A photo of her has remained iconic for over seventy years. To this day, the identity of this wide-eyed child remains unconfirmed, except among the dozens of women who claim to be her. 'I'm the Girl' investigates the power of a single image, what it means to be seen, and the magic of the Holiday season.