In the elegiac documentary “After Sherman,” cameras glide along waterways, hover over swamps, gaze at churches, and travel on southern roads lined with trees, the moss hanging like braids. Under the gaze of director Jon-Sesrie Goff, these places are sacred, even as they remain haunted by a nation’s painful racial history.
“I am Gullah, born into exile,” says Goff, who lives in New York, describing his place among South Carolina’s Gullah Geechee people.
The film focuses on Goff’s father, Reverend Dr. Norvel Goff Sr., a descendant of formerly enslaved people who purchased land in South Carolina after emancipation. Reverend Goff, an owner of lowland real estate, was also an interim pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, after a self-described white supremacist murdered nine black parishioners gathered for Bible study one night in June 2015.
While shucking oysters, son and father discuss what it means to forgive. There is some nuance in Goff Sr.’s understanding. about why some of the victims’ families forgave the killer. There is also reasonable anger from a Charleston resident and tour guide, Alphonso Brown, who shares that while he is a Christian, he will not do the same.
Goff Sr. is central to ‘After Sherman’, but the director also choreographs a gripping tango between his personal journey with his formidable father and the lives of a people and a region. Braid interviews, animation (by Kelly Gallagher) and home movies, and the use of intertitles almost incantating by being whispered, the film is expressionist but never at the expense of its subjects and archival footage.
A quietly plaintive score by composer Tamar-kali gives deep-rooted resonance to this investigative and intimate work of connection. A work that speaks to, as the director says, “a history of knowing who we are and who we belong to.”
After Sherman
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theatres.