(finally) Catching up with: The Confederate States of America

What if the South had won the American Civil War? Would we have Trayvon Martin scenarios all the time or worse?

On quite a low budget but many degrees into the mockumentary genre, film writer, director, professor Kevin Willmott tackled the topic from a faux historic lens with a few fake historians in 2004. It's available on streaming sites or in parts on YouTube (where the comments are always mind boggling).



Part Saturday Night Live type skits, with many fake advertisements, the next one scarier than the one before, and with fake and real time pieces, the hammer never stops pounding. Strangely, nearly ten years after it was made, the film doesn't feel dated at all, since dating itself is part of the film's horror charm. Underneath the outrageous alternative nightmare history, there is plenty of room for contemporary critique, still very relevant to this day, as we struggle to attain a post-racial society.

I'd have a few quibbles with a few plot lines which to me seemed to escape all logic, but fair is fair and the film is well worth watching.



Willmott's more recent Destination: Planet Negro seems equally far-fetched and full of eye-openers. From the YouTube description:

In 1939, leaders of the Black community in America come up with a secret solution to the problems of racism and discrimination -- leave the planet! They launch a rocketship with three astronauts -- the intrepid Professor Avery; his beautiful and intelligent daughter Beneatha; and crack test pilot "Race"Johnson -- to claim the planet Mars.